Bagombo Snuff Box (25 page)

“Gee, Bert,” said Helmholtz, “I don’t know when I can fit
you in. When you went to Fink, I took on another boy. It just so happened he
was sick tonight. But next week—”

“Who is he?” said Bert.

“Norton Shakely,” said Helmholtz. “Little fellow—kind of
green around the gills. He’s just like you were when you started out. No faith
in himself. Doesn’t think he’ll ever make the Ten Square Band, but he will, he
will.”

“He will,” agreed Bert. “No doubt about it.”

Helmholtz clapped Bert on the arm, to put some heart into
him. “Chin up!” he sang. “Shoulders back! Go get your coat, and I’ll take you
home.”

As Bert put on his coat, Helmholtz thought of the windows of
Bert’s home—windows as vacant as dead men’s eyes. Bert’s father had wandered
away years before—and his mother was seldom there. Helmholtz wondered if that
was where the trouble was.

Helmholtz was depressed. “Maybe we can stop somewhere and
get a soda, and maybe play a little table tennis afterward in my basement,” he
said. When he’d given Bert trumpet lessons, they’d always stopped somewhere
for a soda, and then played table tennis afterward.

“Unless you’d rather go see Charlotte or something,” said
Helmholtz.

“Are you kidding?” said Bert. “I hate the way she talks sometimes.”

The next morning, Helmholtz talked with Miss Peach, the
school nurse. It was a symposium between two hearty, plump people, blooming
with hygiene and common sense. In the background, rickety and confused,
stripped to the waist, was Bert.

“By ‘blacked out,’ you mean Bert fainted?” said Miss Peach.

“You didn’t see him do it at the Whitestown game last Friday?”
said Helmholtz.

“I missed that game,” said Miss Peach.

“It was right after we’d formed the block L, when we were
marching down the field to form the pinwheel that turned into the Lincoln High
panther and the Whitestown eagle,” said Helmholtz. The eagle had screamed, and
the panther had eaten it.

“So what did Bert do?” said Miss Peach.

“He was marching along with the band, fine as you please,”
said Helmholtz. “And then he just drifted out of it. He wound up marching by
himself.”

“What did it feel like, Bert?” said Miss Peach.

“Like a dream at first,” said Bert. “Real good, kind of. And
then I woke up, and I was alone.” He gave a sickly smile. “And everybody was
laughing at me.”

“How’s your appetite, Bert?” said Miss Peach.

“He polished off a soda and a hamburger last night,” said
Helmholtz.

“What about your coordination when you play games, Bert?”
said Miss Peach.

“I’m not in sports,” said Bert. “The trumpet takes all the
time I’ve got.”

“Don’t you and your father throw a ball sometimes?” said
Miss Peach.

“I don’t have a father,” said Bert.

“He beat me at table tennis last night,” said Helmholtz.

“All in all, it was quite a binge last night, wasn’t it?”
Miss Peach said.

“It’s what we used to do every Wednesday night,” said Bert.

“It’s what I do with all the boys I give lessons to,” said
Helmholtz.

Miss Peach cocked her head. “You used to do it with Bert?”

“I take lessons from Mr. Fink now,” said Bert.

“When a boy reaches the Ten Square Band,” said Helmholtz, “he’s
beyond me, as far as individual lessons are concerned. I don’t treat him like
a boy anymore. I treat him like a man. And he’s an artist. Only an artist like
Fink can teach him anything from that point on.”

“Ten Square Band,” mused Miss Peach. “That’s ten on a side—a
hundred in all? All dressed alike, all marching like parts of a fine machine?”

“Like a block of postage stamps,” said Helmholtz proudly.

“Uh-huh,” said Miss Peach. “And all of them have had lessons
from you?”

“Heavens, no,” said Helmholtz. “I’ve only got time to give
five boys individual lessons.”

‘A lucky, lucky five,” said Miss Peach. “For a little while.”

The door of the office opened, and Stewart Haley, the
Assistant Principal, came in. He had begun his career as a bright young man.
But now, after ten years of dealing with oversize spirits on undersize
salaries, his brightness had mellowed to the dull gloss of pewter. A lot of his
luster had been lost in verbal scuffles with Helmholtz over expenses of the
band.

In Haley’s hand was a bill. “Well, Helmholtz,” he said, “if
I’d known you were going to be here, I’d have brought another interesting bill
with me. Five war-surplus Signal Corps wire-laying reels, complete with pack
frames? Does that ring a bell?”

“It does,” said Helmholtz, unabashed. ‘And may I say—”

“Later,” said Haley. “Right now I have a matter to take up
with Miss Peach—one that makes your peculation look like peanuts.” He rattled
the bill at Miss Peach. “Miss Peach—have you ordered a large quantity of bandages
recently?”

Miss Peach paled. “I—I ordered thirty yards of sterile
gauze,” she said. “It came this morning. And it’s thirty yards, and it’s gauze.”

Haley sat down on a white stool. ‘According to this bill,”
he said, “somebody in this grand institution has ordered and received two
hundred yards of silver nylon ribbon, three inches wide—treated to glow in the
dark.”

He was looking blankly at Helmholtz when he said it. He went
on looking at Helmholtz, and color crept into his cheeks. “Hello again,
Helmholtz.”

“Hi,” said Helmholtz.

“Down for your daily shot of cocaine?” said Haley.

“Cocaine?” said Helmholtz.

“How else,” said Haley, “could a man get dreams of cornering
the world output of nylon ribbon treated to glow in the dark?”

“It costs much less to make things glow in the dark than
most people realize,” said Helmholtz.

Haley stood. “So it was you!”

Helmholtz laid his hand on Haley’s shoulder and looked him
in the eye. “Stewart,” he said, “the question on everybody’s lips is, How can
the Ten Square Band possibly top its performance at the Westfield game last
year?”

“The big question is,” said Haley, “How can a high school
with a modest budget like ours afford such a vainglorious, Cecil B. DeMille
machine for making music? And the answer is,” said Haley, “We can’t!” He jerked
his head from side to side. “Ninety-five-dollar uniforms! Biggest drum in the
state! Batons and hats that light up! Everything treated to glow in the dark!
Holy smokes!” he said wildly. “The biggest jukebox in the world!”

The inventory brought nothing but joy to Helmholtz. “You
love it,” he said. “Everybody loves it. And wait till you hear what we’re going
to do with those reels and that ribbon!”

“Waiting,” said Haley. “Waiting.”

“Now then,” said Helmholtz, “any band can form block
letters. That’s about the oldest stuff there is. As of this moment our band is
the only band, as far as I know, equipped to write longhand.”

In the muddled silence that followed, Bert, all but
forgotten, spoke up. He had put his shirt back on. “Are you all through with
me?” he said.

“You can go, Bert,” said Miss Peach. “I didn’t find anything
wrong with you.”

“TW “ said Rert. his hand on the doorknob. “Bye, Mr. Helmholtz.”

“So long,” said Helmholtz. “Now what do you think of that?”
he said to Haley. “Longhand!” Just outside the door, Bert bumped into
Charlotte, the dewy pink tulip of a girl who often walked home with him.

“Bert,” said Charlotte, “they told me you were down here. I
thought you were hurt. Are you all right?”

Bert brushed past her without a word, leaning, as though
into a cold, wet gale.

“What do I think of the ribbon?” said Haley to Helmholtz. “I
think this is where the spending of the Ten Square Band is finally stopped.”

“That isn’t the only kind of spree that’s got to be stopped,”
said Miss Peach darkly.

“What do you mean by that?” said Helmholtz.

“I mean,” said Miss Peach, “all this playing fast and loose
with kids’ emotions.” She frowned. “George, I’ve been watching you for years—
watching you use every emotional trick in the books to make your kids march and
play.”

“I try to be friends,” said Helmholtz, untroubled.

“You try to be a lot more than that,” said Miss Peach. “Whatever
a kid needs, you’re it. Father, mother, sister, brother, God, slave, or dog—you’re
it. No wonder we’ve got the best band in the world. The only wonder is that
what’s happened with Bert hasn’t happened a thousand times.”

“What’s eating Bert?” said Helmholtz.

“You won him,” said Miss Peach. “That’s what. Lock, stock,
and barrel—he’s yours, all yours.”

“Sure he likes me,” said Helmholtz. “Hope he does, anyway.”

“He likes you like a son likes a father,” said Miss Peach. “There’s
a casual thing for you.”

Helmholtz couldn’t imagine what the argument was about.
Everything Miss Peach had said was obvious. “That’s only natural, isn’t it?” he
said. “Bert doesn’t have a father, so he’s going to look around for one,
naturally, until he finds some girl who’ll take him over and—”

“Will you please open your eyes, and see what you’ve done to
Bert’s life?” said Miss Peach. “Look what he did to get your attention, after
you stuck him in the Ten Square Band, then sent him off to Mr. Fink and forgot
all about him. He was willing to have the whole world laugh at him, just to get
you to look at him again.”

“Growing up isn’t supposed to be painless,” said Helmholtz. “A
baby’s one thing, a child’s another, and a man’s another. Changing from one
thing to the next is a famous mess.” He opened his eyes wide. “If we don’t know
that, who does?”

“Growing up isn’t supposed to be hell!” said Miss Peach.

Helmholtz was stunned by the word. “What do you want me to
do?”

“It’s none of my business,” said Miss Peach. “It’s a highly
personal affair. That’s The way you made it. That’s the way you work. I’d
think the least you could do would be to learn the difference between getting
yourself tangled up in a boy and getting yourself tangled up in ribbon. You
can cut the ribbon. You can’t do that to a boy.”

“About that ribbon—” said Haley.

“We’ll pack it up and send it back,” said Helmholtz. He didn’t
care about the ribbon anymore. He walked out of the office, his ears burning.

Helmholtz carried himself as though he’d done nothing wrong.
But guilt rode on his back like a chimpanzee. In his tiny office off the band
rehearsal room, Helmholtz removed stacks of sheet music from the washbasin in
the corner and dashed cold water in his face, hoping to make the chimpanzee go
away at least for the next hour. The next hour was the rehearsal period for
the Ten Square Band.

Helmholtz telephoned his good friend Larry Fink, the trumpet
teacher.

“What’s the trouble this time, George?” said Fink.

“The school nurse just jumped all over me for being too nice
to my boys. She says I get too involved, and that’s a very dangerous thing.”

“Oh?”

“Psychology’s a wonderful science,” said Helmholtz. “Without
it, everybody’d still be making the same terrible mistake—being nice to each
other.”

“What brought this on?” said Fink.

“Bert,” said Helmholtz.

“I finally let him go last week,” said Fink. “He never
practiced, came to the lessons unprepared. Frankly, George, I know you thought
a lot of him, but he wasn’t very talented. He wasn’t even very fond of music,
as near as I can tell.”

Helmholtz protested with all his heart. “That boy went from
the C Band to the Ten Square in two years! He took to music like a duck to
water.”

“Like a camel in quicksand, if you ask me,” said Fink. “That
boy busted his butt for you, George. And then you busted his heart when you
handed him on to me. The school nurse is right: You’ve got to be more careful
about who you’re nice to.”

“He’s even forgotten how to march. He fell out of step and
spoiled a formation, forgot where he was supposed to go, at half-time at the
Findlay Tech game.”

“He told me about it,” said Fink.

“Did he have any explanation?”

“He was surprised you and the nurse didn’t come up with it.
Or maybe the nurse figured it out, but didn’t want anybody else to know.”

“I still can’t imagine,” said Helmholtz.

“He was drunk, George. He said it was his first time, and
promised it would be his last. Unfortunately, I don’t believe we can count on
that.”

“But he still can’t march,” said Helmholtz, shocked. “When
just the two of us practice alone, with nobody watching, he finds it impossible
to keep in step with me. Is he drunk all the time?”

“George,” said Fink, “you and your innocence have turned a
person who never should have been a musician into an actor instead.”

From the rehearsal room outside Helmholtz’s office came the
cracks and slams of chairs being set up for the Ten Square Band. Bandsmen with
a free period were doing that. The coming hour was ordinarily a perfect one for
the bandmaster, in which he became weightless, as he sang the part of this
instrument or that one, while his bandsmen played. But now he feared it.

He was going to have to face Bert again, having been made
aware in the interim of how much he might have hurt the boy. And maybe others.

Would he be to blame, if Bert went on to become an
alcoholic? He thought about the thousand or more boys with whom he had behaved
like a father, whether they had a real father or not. To his knowledge, several
had later become drunks. Two had been arrested for drugs, and one for burglary.
He lost track of most. Few came back to see him after graduation. That was something
else it was time to think about.

The rest of the band entered now, Bert among them. Helmholtz
heard himself say to him, as privately as he could, “Could you see me in my office
after school?” He hadn’t a clue of what he would say then.

He went to his music stand in front, rapped his baton
against it. The band fell silent. “Let’s start off with ‘Lincoln’s Foes Sha^
Wail Tonight.’” The author of the words and music was Helmholtz himself. He had
written them during his first year as bandmaster, when the school’s bandsmen
at athletic events and parades had numbered only fifty. Their uniforms fit them
purely by chance, and in any case made them look, as Helmholtz himself had said
at the time, like “deserters from Valley Forge.” That was twenty years before.