It’s Not a Tuba
By Marshall J. Pierce
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Marshall J. Pierce
Smashwords
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Wendy was a good shot. She was kind of a tomboy and was showing off her skill. It wasn’t a real game, and there wasn’t anything to win. But if anyone was going to win at popping dandelion heads into my baritone it was going to be Wendy. The baritone sat 10 feet away from us on the grass. I was getting frustrated. I had only started doing it because I was bored, but now five other people were competing. Wendy was slaying us. She held the record until Matt took notice and decided he should start playing with us. Matt was a jock, one of those kids who was gifted in sports of any kind. I took another shot and missed just as Matt's first attempt made it directly in. I sighed and stopped looking for dandelions and just watched six people in various states of band uniform undress flick flowers into my instrument. At least I was the center of attention, more or less.
Not very many people played baritone, which is just a deeper toned version of the trumpet. I had picked it because the parts were exceptionally easy to memorize, no one else played it so I didn’t have to be absolutely in time with anyone if I didn’t feel like it, and it was kind of cool to be the sole player. It was the school’s only baritone and I had been the only one to play it for a few years; the only person who had shown any interest in it or even known what it was. But I was not making its golden years any brighter. My school’s baritone had led a long and tough life, and the dents of a dozen players before me pocked its dulling brass. I had already used it to throttle a kid who was bullying my younger brother and his friend, and dented the horn yet again. It was a formidable weapon, wielded properly, but otherwise a fairly boring instrument. Boring was fine with me. It made Band that much easier.
Matt got four dandelions in the horn in a row and realized the game was not interesting enough and that the people playing were not high enough in the social strata to remain in their presence for very long. He left to hang out with his sports buddies, who were whipping each other with towels on the other side of the buses. I looked through the people circled around me and watched him jog away towards his friends. They were running around a large part of the field, completely oblivious to the people around them, shouting and laughing while they snapped each other on the ass with towels. They made it look effortless, like so much fun, their natural athletic skills turning even a violent form of tag into something like a dance. I wouldn’t participate. I sucked at sports and this was just one more example. I would never be asked to join in a towel whipping game with other guys, although I had had my butt good-naturedly snapped a couple times in the locker room, which was nice – it meant I was included. The other guys didn’t dislike me or anything, I was a reliably mediocre second string player who got in trouble for cursing at the opposing teams every time I got a chance to play. That was cool enough to warrant a token position on the team. But they didn’t think to invite me when it came to random hangouts to drink coke, watch late night HBO when someone’s parents were out, or squeeze each other’s balls when someone weren’t looking. A blessing and a curse.
Our marching band had been competing in a long Memorial Day parade of high school bands from around the state. Band after band came marching into the parking lot at the end in various states of post-parade disarray. Some school band leaders had their teams march in form and play their marching songs right up to their bus, march in standing step until the end of the song and be dismissed like they were Army cadets. Other bands, like ours, hit the finish line and just stopped playing and ran to the buses to change into regular clothes before the bandleader could even blow another whistle. Cummerbunds, hats, ascots and jackets were ripped off in mid-dash to the bus. I hadn’t thought to bring other clothes, so I just stripped to my t-shirt and kept the green polyester pants on. I suddenly longed for shorts. It was a nice day.
I skipped out on the post-march huddle next to the boys’ bus - a debriefing on our performance, some hip-hip-hoorays and a rendition of our school song - and snuck unseen to find a place to relax. I spotted an un-spoiled patch of sunny grass by the edge of the field and headed directly for it. School spirit-building exercises embarrassed me, and I tried to avoid them in every situation although school surrounded you with them – pep rallies, sports team huddles, bad “feel good” movies about “loving yourself for who you are”, school sing-alongs, the pledge of allegiance. It was hell. I was much more content laying in the sun and daydreaming about being rich.
From my sunny patch, I could hear the mix of halfhearted and full-throated hoorays (volume dependant on your level of ‘pep’), and Ms. White's scratchy voice cheerleading them. Evidently we had not won with our versions of “Celebration” and “The Ewok Song” but she was proud of us anyway. We had not messed up, and managed to stick to the level we had previously achieved in her carefully drilled and frequent practice sessions. I thought our band sucked compared to what I had heard that day. There were bands doing “Word Up” and dancing in the street, there were actual gymnasts and cheerleader routines, there were some that pulled off entire Sousa marches like they were in the USO. We were just a mediocre band from a small high school in a no name town. But at least our new uniforms looked nicer than the old ones, which had made us look like we came from some sort of marching band.
When Wendy and the rest of the gang found me after the huddle, I was already picking dandelions and half-heartedly flicking the heads into my horn. Within minutes we had a game going. Naturally, without Matt around, Wendy became our winner with nine heads in the baritone.
“You guys gotta buy me an ice cream sandwich!” she yelled, bouncing up and down and clapping.
We all groaned.
“My baritone! I'm automatically not paying for anything!” I announced.
“Well, Ms. White is gonna be mad when she finds out you put dandelions in your baritone, Marshall.” Wendy said this loudly enough so that the whole group and anyone within 20 feet could hear her. There was a high level of threat in her voice. Wendy mistakenly thought she was above me socially (which she was not), superior in the hierarchy of student-teacher ass kissing (which she definitely was), but also thought that I cared in some way what Ms. White thought (which I officially did not).
“I don’t care,” I said as flippantly as possible, “Ms. White is a dyke.”