Bagombo Snuff Box (9 page)

Mr. Helmholtz, coming out of his wistful dream of a bass
drum bigger than the one that had beaten him, administered the coup de grace to
the waltz by clattering his stick against his music stand. ‘All righty, all
righty,” he said cheerily, and he nodded his congratulations to the two who had
persevered to the bitter end.

Walter Plummer, the clarinetist, responded gravely, like a
concert soloist receiving an ovation led by the director of a symphony
orchestra. He was small, but with a thick chest developed in summers spent at
the bottom of swimming pools, and he could hold a note longer than anyone in the
A Band, much longer, but that was all he could do. He drew back his tired,
reddened lips, showing the two large front teeth that gave him the look of a
squirrel, adjusted his reed, limbered his fingers, and awaited the next
challenge to his virtuosity.

This would be Plummer’s third year in the C Band, Mr. Helmholtz
thought, with a mixture of pity and fear. Nothing could shake Plummer’s
determination to earn the right to wear one of the sacred letters of the A
Band, so far, terribly far away.

Mr. Helmholtz had tried to tell Plummer how misplaced his
ambitions were, to recommend other fields for his great lungs and enthusiasm,
where pitch would be unimportant. But Plummer was in love, not with music, but
with the letter sweaters. Being as tone-deaf as boiled cabbage, he could detect
nothing in his own playing about which to be discouraged.

“Remember,” said Mr. Helmholtz to the C Band, “Friday is
challenge day. so be on your toes. The chairs you have now were assigned
arbitrarily. On challenge day it’ll be up to you to prove which chair you
really deserve.” He avoided the narrowed, confident eyes of Plummer, who had
taken the first clarinetist’s chair without consulting the seating plan posted
on the bulletin board. Challenge day occurred every two weeks, and on that day
any bandsman could challenge anyone ahead of him to a contest for his
position, with Mr. Helmholtz as judge. Plummer’s hand was raised, its fingers
snapping. “Yes, Plummer?” said Mr. Helmholtz. He had come to dread challenge
day because of Plummer. He had come to think of it as Plummer’s day. Plummer
never challenged anybody in the C Band or even the B Band, but stormed the organization
at the very top, challenging, as was unfortunately the privilege of all, only
members of the A Band. The waste of the A Band’s time was troubling enough, but
infinitely more painful for Mr. Helmholtz were Plummer’s looks of stunned
disbelief when he heard Mr. Helmholtz’s decision that he hadn’t outplayed the
men he’d challenged.

“Mr. Helmholtz, “ said Plummer, “I’d tike to come to A Band
session that day.”

“All right—if you feel up to it.” Plummer always felt up to
it, and it would have been more of a surprise if Plummer had announced that he
wouldn’t be at the A Band session. “I’d like to challenge Flammer.”

The rustling of sheet music and clicking of instrument case
latches stopped. Flammer was the first clarinetist in the A Band, a genius whom
not even members of the A Band would have had the gall to challenge.

Mr. Helmholtz cleared his throat. “I admire your spirit,
Plummer, but isn’t that rather ambitious for the first of the year? Perhaps you
should start out with, say, challenging Ed Delaney.” Delaney held down the last
chair in the B Band.

“You don’t understand,” said Plummer. “You haven’t noticed I
have a new clarinet.”

“Hmm? Oh—well, so you do.”

Plummer stroked the satin-black barrel of the instrument as
though it were King Arthur’s sword, giving magical powers to whoever possessed
it. “It’s as good as Flammer’s,” said Plummer. “Better, even.”

There was a warning in his voice, telling Mr. Helmholtz that
the days of discrimination were over, that nobody in his right mind would dare
to hold back a man with an instrument like this.

“Urn,” said Mr. Helmholtz. “Well, we’ll see, we’ll see.”

After practice, he was forced into close quarters with
Plummer again into close quarters with Plummer again in the crowded hallway.
Plummer was talking darkly to a wide-eyed freshman bandsman.

“Know why the band lost to Johnstown High last June?” asked
Plummer, seemingly ignorant of the fact that he was back-to-back with Mr. Helmholtz.
“Because they stopped running the band on the merit system. Keep your eyes open
on Friday.”

Mr. George M. Helmholtz lived in a world of music, and even
the throbbing of his headache came to him musically, if painfully, as the deep-throated
boom of a bass drum seven feet in diameter. It was late afternoon on the first
challenge day of the new school year. He was sitting in his livingroom, his
eyes covered, awaiting another sort of thump—the impact of the evening paper,
hurled against the clapboards of the front of the house by Walter Plummer, the
delivery boy.

As Mr. Helmholtz was telling himself that he would rather
not have his newspaper on challenge day, since Plummer came with it, the paper
was delivered with a crash. “Plummer!” he cried.

“Yes, sir?” said Plummer from the sidewalk.

Mr. Helmholtz shuffled to the door in his carpet slippers. “Please,
my boy,” he said, “can’t we be friends?”

“Sure—why not?” said Plummer. “Let bygones be bygones, is what
I say.” He gave a bitter imitation of an amiable chuckle. “Water over the dam. It’s
been two hours now since you stuck the knife in me.”

Mr. Helmholtz sighed. “Have you got a moment? It’s time we
had a talk, my boy.”

Plummer hid his papers under the shrubbery, and walked in.
Mr. Helmholtz gestured at the most comfortable chair in the room, the one in
which he’d been sitting. Plummer chose to sit on the edge of a hard one with a
straight back instead.

My boy,” said the bandmaster, “God made all kinds of people:
some 10 can run fast, some who can write wonderful stories, some who can paint
pictures, some who can sell anything, some who can make beautiful music. But He
didn’t make anybody who could do everything well. Part of the growing-up
process is finding out what we can do well and what we can’t do well.” He
patted Plummer’s shoulder. “The last part, finding out what we can’t do, is
what hurts most about growing up. But everybody has to face it, and then go in
search of his true self.”

Plummer’s head was sinking lower and lower on his chest, and
Mr. Helmholtz hastily pointed out a silver lining. “For instance, Flammer could
never run a business like a paper route, keeping records, getting new
customers. He hasn’t that kind of a mind, and couldn’t do that sort of thing if
his life depended on it.”

“You’ve got a point,” said Plummer with unexpected brightness.
“A guy’s got to be awful one-sided to be as good at one thing as Flammer is. I
think it’s more worthwhile to try to be better rounded. No, Flammer beat me
fair and square today, and I don’t want you to think I’m a bad sport about
that. It isn’t that that gets me.”

“That’s mature of you,” said Mr. Helmholtz. “But what I was
trying to point out to you was that we’ve all got weak points, and—”

Plummer waved him to silence. “You don’t have to explain to
me, Mr. Helmholtz. With a job as big as you’ve got, it’d be a miracle if you
did the whole thing right.”

“Now, hold on, Plummer!” said Mr. Helmholtz.

‘All I’m asking is that you look at it from my point of view,”
said Plummer. “No sooner’d I come back from challenging A Band material, no
sooner’d I come back from playing my heart out, than you turned those C Band
kids loose on me. You and I know we were just giving ‘em the feel of challenge
days, and that I was all played out. But did you tell them that? Heck, no, you
didn’t, Mr. Helmholtz, and those kids all think they can play better than me.
That’s all I’m sore about, Mr. Helmholtz. They think it means something, me in
the last chair of the C Band.”

“Plummer,” said Mr. Helmholtz, “I have been trying to tell
you something as kindly as possible, but the only way to get it across to you
is to tell it to you straight.”

“Go ahead and quash criticism,” said Plummer, standing.

“Quash?”

“Quash,” said Plummer with finality. He headed for the door.
“I’m probably ruining my chances for getting into the A Band by speaking out like
this, Mr. Helmholtz, but frankly, it’s incidents like what happened to me today
that lost you the band competition last June.”

“It was a seven-foot bass drum!”

“Well, get one for Lincoln High and see how you make out
then.”

“I’d give my right arm for one!” said Mr. Helmholtz,
forgetting the point at issue and remembering his all-consuming dream.

Plummer paused on the threshold. “One like the Knights of
Kandahar use in their parades?”

“That’s the ticket!” Mr. Helmholtz imagined the Knights of
Kandahar’s huge drum, the showpiece of every local parade. He tried to think
of it with the Lincoln High School black panther painted on it. “Yes, sir!” When
the bandmaster returned to earth, Plummer was astride his bicycle.

Mr. Helmholtz started to shout after Plummer, to bring him
back and tell him bluntly that he didn’t have the remotest chance of getting
out of C Band ever, that he would never be able to understand that the mission
of a band wasn’t simply to make noises but to make special kinds of noises. But
Plummer was off and away.

Temporarily relieved until next challenge day, Mr. Helmholtz
sat down to enjoy his paper, to read that the treasurer of the Knights of
Kandahar, a respected citizen, had disappeared with the organization’s funds,
leaving behind and unpaid the Knights’ bills for the past year and a half. “We’ll
pay a hundred cents on the dollar, if we have to sell everything but the Sacred
Mace,” the Sublime Chamberlain of the Inner Shrine had said.

Mr. Helmholtz didn’t know any of the people involved, and he
yawned and turned to the funnies. He gasped, turned to the front page again. He
looked up a number in the phone book and dialed.

“Zum-zum-zum-zum,” went the busy signal in his ear. He
dropped the telephone into its cradle. Hundreds of people, he thought, must be
trying to get in touch with the Sublime Chamberlain of the Inner Shrine of the
Knights of Kandahar at this moment. He looked up at his flaking ceiling in
prayer. But none of them, he prayed, was after a bargain in a cart-borne bass
drum.

He dialed again and again, and always got the busy signal.
He walked out on his porch to relieve some of the tension building up in him.
He would be the only one bidding on the drum, he told himself, and he could name
his price. Good Lord! If he offered fifty dollars for it, he could probably
have it! He’d put up his own money, and get the school to pay him back in three
years, when the plumes with the electric lights in them were paid for in full.

He was laughing like a department store Santa Claus, when
his gaze dropped from heaven to his lawn and he espied Plummer’s undelivered
newspapers lying beneath the shrubbery.

He went inside and called the Sublime Chamberlain again,
with the same results. He then called Plummer’s home to let him know where the
papers were mislaid. But that line was busy, too.

He dialed alternately the Hummers’ number and the Sublime
Chamberlain’s number for fifteen minutes before getting a ringing signal.

“Yes?” said Mrs. Plummer.

“This is Mr. Helmholtz, Mrs. Plummer. Is Walter there?”

“He was here a minute ago, telephoning, but he just went out
of here like a shot.”

“Looking for his papers? He left them under my spirea.”

“He did? Heavens, I have no idea where he was going. He didn’t
say anything about his papers, but I thought I overheard something about selling
his clarinet.” She sighed, and then laughed. “Having money of their own makes
them awfully independent. He never tells me anything.”

“Well, you tell him I think maybe it’s for the best, his
selling his clarinet. And tell him where his papers are.”

It was unexpected good news that Plummer had at last seen
the light about his musical career. The bandmaster now called the Sublime Chamberlain’s
home again for more good news. He got through this time, but was disappointed
to learn that the man had just left on some sort of lodge business.

For years, Mr. Helmholtz had managed to smile and keep his
wits about him in C Band practice sessions. But on the day after his fruitless
efforts to find out anything about the Knights of Kandahar’s bass drum, his
defenses were down, and the poisonous music penetrated to the roots of his
soul.

“No, no, no!” he cried in pain. He threw his white baton
against the brick wall. The springy stick bounded off the bricks and fell into
an empty folding chair at the rear of the clarinet section—Plummer’s empty
chair.

As Mr. Helmholtz retrieved the baton, he found himself unexpectedly
moved by the symbol of the empty chair. No one else, he realized, no matter
how untalented, could fill the last chair in the organization as well as
Plummer had. Mr. Helmholtz looked up to find many of the bandsmen contemplating
the chair with him, as though they, too, sensed that something great, in a
fantastic way, had disappeared, and that life would be a good bit duller on account
of that.

During the ten minutes between the C Band and B Band sessions,
Mr. Helmholtz hurried to his office and again tried to get in touch with the
Sublime Chamberlain of the Knights of Kandahar. No luck! “Lord knows where he’s
off to now,” Mr. Helmholtz was told. “He was in for just a second, but went
right out again. I gave him your name, so I expect he’ll call you when he gets
a minute. You’re the drum gentleman, aren’t you?”

“That’s right—the drum gentleman.”

The buzzers in the hall were sounding, marking the beginning
of another class period. Mr. Helmholtz wanted to stay by the phone until he’d
caught the Sublime Chamberlain and closed the deal, but the B Band was waiting—and
after that it would be the A Band.