Bagombo Snuff Box (17 page)

The conversation became tense whispers.

“And what’s the matter with Leroy’s wearing one of the uniforms
you’ve already got?” said Haley.

“Leroy is bell-shaped,” said Helmholtz. “We don’t have a uniform
that doesn’t bag or bind on him.”

“This is a public school, not a Broadway musical!” said
Haley. “Not only have we got students shaped liked bells, we’ve got them shaped
like telephone poles, pop bottles, chimpanzees, and Greek gods. There’s going
to have to be a certain amount of bagging and binding.”

“My duty,” said Helmholtz, standing, “is to bring the best music
out of whoever chooses to come to me. If a boy’s shape prevents him from making
the music he’s capable of making, then it’s my duty to get him a shape that
will make him play like an angel. This I did, and here we are.” He sat down. “If
I could be made to feel sorry for this, then I wouldn’t be the man for my job.”

“A special uniform is going to make Leroy play better?” said
Haley.

“In rehearsals, with nobody but fellow musicians around,”
said Helmholtz, “Leroy has brilliance and feeling that would make you weep and
faint. But when Leroy marches, with strangers watching, particularly girls, he
gets out of step, stumbles, and can’t even play ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat.’”
Helmholtz brought his fist down on the desk. “And that’s not going to happen at
the state band festival!”

The bill in Haley’s hand was rumpled and moist now. “The
message I came to deliver today,” he said, “remains unchanged: You can’t get
blood out of a turnip. The total cash assets of the band are seventy-five
dollars, and there is absolutely no way for the school to provide the remaining
twenty—absolutely none.”

He turned to the delivery boy. “That is my somber message to
you, as well,” he said.

“Mr. Kornblum said he was losing money on it as it was,”
said the delivery boy. “He said Mr. Helmholtz came in and started talking, and
before he knew it—”

“Don’t worry about a thing,” said Helmholtz. He brought out
his checkbook and, with a smile and a flourish, wrote a check for twenty dollars.

Haley was ashen. “I’m sorry it has to turn out this way,” he
said.

Helmholtz ignored him. He took the parcel from the delivery
boy and called to Leroy, “Would you come in, please?”

Leroy came in slowly, shuffling, doing his fan dance with
the piccolo case and portfolio, apologizing as he came.

“Thought you might like to try on your new uniform for the
band festival, Leroy,” said Helmholtz.

“I don’t think I’d better march,” said Leroy. “I’d get all
mixed up and ruin everything.”

Helmholtz opened the box dramatically. “This uniform’s special,
Leroy.”

“Every time I see one of those uniforms,” said Haley, “all I
can think of is a road company of The Chocolate Soldier. That’s the uniform the
stars wear, but you’ve got a hundred of the things—a hundred and one.”

Helmholtz removed Leroy’s jacket. Leroy stood humbly in his
shirtsleeves, relieved of his piccolo case and portfolio, comical, seeing
nothing at all comical in being bell-shaped.

Helmholtz slipped the new jacket over Leroy’s narrow shoulders.
He buttoned the great brass buttons and fluffed up the gold braid cascading
from the epaulets. “There, Leroy.”

“Zoot!” exclaimed the delivery boy. “Man, I mean zoot!”

Leroy looked dazedly from one massive, jutting shoulder to
the other, and then down at the astonishing taper to his hips.

“Rocky Marciano!” said Haley.

“Walk up and down the halls, Leroy,” said Helmholtz. “Get
the feel of it.”

Leroy blundered through the door, catching his epaulets on
the frame.

“Sideways,” said Helmholtz, “you’ll have to learn to go
through doors sideways.”

“Only about ten percent of what’s under the uniform is
Leroy,” said Haley, when Leroy was out of hearing.

“It’s all Leroy,” said Helmholtz. “Wait and see—wait until
we swing past the reviewing stand at the band festival and Leroy does his
stuff.”

When Leroy returned to the office, he was marching, knees
high. He halted and clicked his heels. His chin was up, his breathing shallow.

“You can take it off, Leroy,” said Helmholtz. “If you don’t
feel up to marching in the band festival, just forget it.” He reached across
his desk and undid a brass button.

Leroy’s hand came up quickly to protect the rest of the
buttons. “Please,” he said, “I think maybe I could march after all.”

“That can be arranged,” said Helmholtz. “I have a certain
amount of influence in band matters.” Leroy buttoned the button. “Gee,” he
said, “I walked past the athletic office, and Coach Jorgenson came out like he
was shot out of a cannon.”

“What did the silent Swede have to say?” said Helmholtz.

“He said that only in this band-happy school would they make
a piccolo player out of a man built like a locomotive,” said Leroy. “His
secretary came out, too.”

“Did Miss Bearden like the uniform?” said Helmholtz.

“I don’t know,” said Leroy. “She didn’t say anything. She
just looked and looked.”

Late that afternoon, George M. Helmholtz appeared in the office
of Harold Crane, head of the English Department. Helmholtz was carrying a
heavy, ornate gold picture frame and looking embarrassed.

“I hardly know how to begin,” said Helmholtz. “I—I thought
maybe I could sell you a picture frame.” He turned the frame this way and that.
“It’s a nice frame, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” said Crane. “I’ve admired it often in your
office. That is the frame you had around John Philip Sousa, isn’t it?”

Helmholtz nodded. “I thought maybe you’d like to frame some
John Philip Sousa in your line—Shakespeare, Edgar Rice Burroughs.”

“That might be nice,” said Crane. “But frankly, the need
hasn’t made itself strongly felt.”

“It’s a thirty-nine-dollar frame,” said Helmholtz. “I’ll let
it go for twenty.”

“Look here,” said Crane, “if you’re in some sort of jam, I
can let you have—”

“No, no, no,” said Helmholtz, holding up his hand. Fear
crossed his face. “If I started on credit, heaven only knows where it would
end.”

Crane shook his head. “That’s a nice frame, all right, and a
real bargain. Sad to say, though, I’m in no shape to lay out twenty dollars for
something like that. I’ve got to buy a new tire for twenty-three dollars this
afternoon and—”

“What size?” said Helmholtz.

“Size?” said Crane. “Six-seventy, fifteen. Why?”

“I’ll sell you one for twenty dollars,” said Helmholtz. “Never
been touched.”

“Where would you get a tire?” said Crane.

“By a stroke of luck,” said Helmholtz, “I have an extra one.”

“You don’t mean your spare, do you?” said Crane.

“Yes,” said Helmholtz, “but I’ll never need it. I’ll be
careful where I drive. Please, you’ve got to buy it. The money isn’t for me, it’s
for the band.”

“What else would it be for?” said Crane helplessly. He took
out his billfold.

When Helmholtz got back to his office, and was restoring
John Philip Sousa to the frame, Leroy walked in, whistling. He wore the jacket
with the boulder shoulders.

“You still here, Leroy?” said Helmholtz. “Thought you went
home hours ago.”

“Can’t seem to take the thing off,” said Leroy. “I was
trying a kind of experiment with it.”

“Oh?”

“I’d walk down the hall past a bunch of girls,” said Leroy, “whistling
the piccolo part of ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever.’”

“And?” said Helmholtz.

“Kept step and didn’t miss a note,” said Leroy.

The city’s main street was cleared of traffic for eight
blocks, swept, and lined with bunting for the cream of the state’s youth, its
high school bands. At one end of the line of march was a great square with a
reviewing stand. At the other end were the bands, hidden in alleys, waiting for
orders to march.

The band that looked and sounded best to the judges in the reviewing
stand would receive a great trophy, donated by the Chamber of Commerce. The
trophy was two years old, and bore the name of Lincoln High School as winner
twice.

In the alleys, twenty-five bandmasters were preparing secret
weapons with which they hoped to prevent Lincoln’s winning a third time—special
effects with flash powder, flaming batons, pretty cowgirls, and at least one
three-inch cannon. But everywhere hung the smog of defeat, save over the bright
plumage of the ranks of Lincoln High.

Beside those complacent ranks stood Stewart Haley, Assistant
Principal, and, wearing what Haley referred to privately as the uniform of a
Bulgarian rear admiral, George M. Helmholtz, Director of the Band.

Lincoln High shared the alley with bands from three other
schools, and the blank walls on either side echoed harshly with the shrieks and
growls of bands tuning up.

Helmholtz was lighting pieces of punk with Haley’s lighter,
blowing on them, and passing them in to every fourth man, who had a straight,
cylindrical firework under his sash.

“First will come the order ‘Prepare to light!’” said
Helmholtz. “Ten seconds later, ‘Light!’ When your left foot strikes the
ground, touch your punk to the end of the fuse. The rest of you, when we hit
the reviewing stand, I want you to stop playing as though you’d been shot in
the heart. And Leroy—”

Helmholtz craned his neck to find Leroy. As he did so, he became
aware of a rival drum major, seedy and drab by comparison with Lincoln’s peacocks,
who had been listening to everything he said.

“What can I do for you?” said Helmholtz.

“Is this the Doormen’s Convention?” said the drum major.

Helmholtz did not smile. “You’d do well to stay with your
own organization,” he said crisply. “You’re plainly in need of practice and
sprucing up, and time is short.”

The drum major walked away, sneering, insolently spinning
his baton.

“Now, where’s Leroy got to, this time?” said Helmholtz. “He’s
a disciplinary problem whenever he puts on that uniform. A new man.”

“You mean Blabbermouth Duggan?” said Haley. He pointed to
Leroy’s broad back in the midst of another band. Leroy was talking animatedly
to a fellow piccoloist, who happened to be a very pretty girl with golden curls
tucked under her cap. “You mean Casanova Duggan?” said Haley.

“Everything’s built around Leroy,” said Helmholtz. “If anything
went wrong with Leroy, we’d be lucky to place second. . . . Leroy!”

Leroy paid no attention.

Leroy was too engrossed to hear Helmholtz. He was too engrossed
to notice that the insolent drum major, who had lately called Helmholtz’s band
a Doormen’s Convention, was now examining his broad back with profound
curiosity.

The drum major prodded one of Leroy’s shoulder pads with the
rubber tip of his baton. Leroy gave no sign that he felt it. The drum major
laid his hand on Leroy’s shoulder and dug his fingers several inches into it.
Leroy went on talking.

With an audience gathering, the drum major began a series of
probings with his baton, starting from the outside of Leroy’s shoulder and
moving in toward the middle, trying to locate the point where padding stopped
and Leroy began.

The baton at last found flesh, and Leroy turned in surprise.
“What’s the idea?” he said.

“Making sure your stuffing’s all in place, General,” said
the drum major. “Spring a leak, and we’ll be up to our knees in sawdust.”

Leroy reddened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he
said.

“Ask your boyfriend to take off his jacket so we can all see
his rippling muscles,” the drum major said to Leroy’s new girl. He challenged
Leroy, “Go on, take it off.”

“Make me,” said Leroy.

“All righty, all righty,” said Helmholtz, stepping between
the two.

“You think I can’t?” said the drum major.

Leroy swallowed and thought for a long time. “I know you can’t,”
he said at last.

The drum major pushed Helmholtz aside and seized Leroy’s
jacket by its shoulders. Off came the epaulets, then the citation cord, then
the sash. Buttons popped off, and Leroy’s undershirt showed. : “Now,” said the
drum major, “we’ll simply undo this, and—”

Leroy exploded. He hit the drum major’s nose, stripped off
his buttons, medals, and braid, hit him in the stomach, and went over to get
his baton, with the apparent intention of beating him to death with it.

“Leroy! Stop!” cried Helmholtz in anguish. He wrenched the
baton from Leroy. “Just look at you! Look at your new uniform—wrecked!”
Trembling, he touched the rents, the threads of missing buttons, the misshapen
padding. He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “It’s all over. We
concede—Lincoln High concedes.”

Leroy was wild-eyed, unrepentant. “I don’t care!” he yelled.
“I’m glad!”

Helmholtz called over another bandsman and gave him the keys
to his car. “There’s a spare uniform in the back,” he said numbly. “Go get it
for Leroy.”

The Lincoln High School Ten Square Band swung smartly along
the street, moving toward the bright banners of the reviewing stand. George M.
Helmholtz smiled as he marched along the curb beside it. Inside he was ill.
angry, and full of dread. With one cruel stroke, Fate had transformed hi<
plan for winning the trophy into the most preposterous anticlimax in bane history.

He couldn’t bear to look at the young man on whom he had
staked everything. He could imagine Leroy with appalling clarity, slouching
along, slovenly, lost in a misfit uniform, a jumble of neuroses and costly
fabrics. Leroy was to play alone when the band passed in review. Leroy,
Helmholtz reflected, would be incapable even of recalling his own name at that
point.

Ahead was the first of a series of chalk marks Helmholtz had
made on the curb earlier in the day, carefully measured distances from the
reviewing stand.

Helmholtz blew his whistle as he passed the mark, and the
band struck up “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” full-blooded, throbbing,
thrilling. It raised the crowd on its toes and put roses in its cheeks. The
judges leaned out of the reviewing stand in happy anticipation of the coming
splendor.