“You okay?” Hook said anxiously, pushing back the rest of us. From somewhere in the room there was a laugh.
Crazy didn’t move. We stood around him. “God damn it,” Hook said, “the bastard is out cold.” He looked like he wanted to kick him.
“And look!” Sidney said, lifting Crazy’s left arm carefully. Right behind his hand (his fingering hand) was a bluish lump that stretched his skin tight. “He’s hurt that wrist bad,” Sidney said: “He’s out of it.”
“Fuck,” Hook said quietly. I sat down beside him, stunned by our had luck. There was a crowd gathered around us but I didn’t pay them any attention. I watched Crazy’s wrist swell out to the same width as his hand; that was our whole story, right there. We’d put him on stage in a lot of strange conditions before, but a man can’t play without his fingering hand…
“Hey, Wright is here today,” Tone-bar said. He was frowning with what Looked like real concern. “Doesn’t he know some old jazz?” None of us answered him. “No, seriously,” he said. “This kid Wright is an absolute genius, he’ll probably be able to fill in for you.” Still none of us spoke. “Well, I know where his box is,” he finally continued. “I’ll try to find him.” He worked his way through the crowd and hurried out the door.
I sat there, feeling the knot in my stomach become a solid bar, and watched a few of the stagehands lift Crazy up and carry him out. We were beat before we began. You can play jazz without a tuba player—we had often had to—but the trombone has to take a lot of the bass line, nobody can be as free with the rhythm, the sound is tinny, there’s no power to it, there’s no bottom! Sidney looked over at Hook and said, with a sort of furtive relief, “Well, you said we didn’t have a chance,” but Hook just shook his head, eyes glistening, and said quietly, “I wanted to show ’em.”
I sat and wondered if I was going to be sick. Crazy had crazied us right back to the rocks, and on top of my knotted stomach my heart pounded loud and slow as if saying “ka-Doom, ka-Doom, ka-DOOM.” I thought of all the stories I’d heard of Vesta, the barren graveyard of the asteroids, and hoped I didn’t live long enough to be sent there.
There was a long silence. None of us moved. The other performers circled about as quietly, making sure not to look at us. Slowly, very slowly, Sidney began to pull apart his clarinet.
“I got him!” came a wild voice. “He can do it!” Tone-bar came flying in the door, pulling a skinny kid by the arm. He halted and the kid slammed into his back. With a grin Tone-bar stepped aside and waved an arm.
“Perhaps the finest musician of our—” he began, but the kid interrupted him:
“I hear you need a tuba man,” he said and stepped forward. He was a few years younger than me even, and the grin on his adolescent face looked like it was clamped over a burst of laughter. When he pushed all his long black tangles of hair back I saw that the pupils of his eyes were flinching wildly just inside the line of the irises; he was clearly spaced, probably had never seen a tuba before.
“Come on, man,” I said. “Where did you learn to play jazz tuba?”
“Pluto,” he said, and laughed.
I stared at him. I couldn’t believe it. As far as I knew, Dixieland jazz was only played in the bars on Jupiter Metals’ rocks; I would have bet I knew, or knew of, every Dixieland musician alive. And this kid didn’t come from the mines. He was too skinny, too sharp-edged, he didn’t have the look.
“I didn’t even know anyone played traditional jazz anymore,” he said. “I thought I was the only one.”
“I don’t believe it,” I said.
“We don’t got a whole lot of choice, Shaky, we’re running out of time,” said Hook. “Hey kid—you know ‘Panama’ ?“
“Sure,” he said, and sang the opening bars. “Bum-bum, da da da-da, da da-da-da da.”
“Son of a bitch,” I said.
“I can do it,” the kid said. “I want to do it.”
“All right,” Hook said, “Might as well take him.” I looked at Hook in surprise and saw that he was grinning again; clearly there was something about the kid, the intensity of those black-hole eyes perhaps, that had him convinced. He slapped the kid on the shoulder and nearly knocked him down, “Come on!” he shouted. “Time to go!”
“Time to go!” I cried. “What the hell happened to Number seventeen?”
“They getting off! Let’s go play!”
And the stagehands were already carrying stuff for us, watching the kid and gabbling excitedly.
“Shit,” I exclaimed, and stuck my hand out to the kid. We shook. “Welcome to the Hot Six. Solos all sixteen bars, including yours if you want, choruses and refrains all repeated, don’t worry about the tags; we’ll have to stick to the old songs, do you know ‘St. Louis Blues’? ‘That’s a Plenty’? ‘Didn’t He Ramble’? ‘Milenburg Joys’? ‘Mahogany Hall Stomp’? ‘Want a Big Butter-and-Egg Man’? ‘Ain’t You Coming Back to Dixieland’?” and, miraculously, he kept yelling “Yes! Yes! Yes!” as he struggled with the tuba, still almost laughing, and then we were in the hall and didn’t have time for any more—
We got out on stage and it was hot as a smelting chamber. The audience was just a blue-black blur outside the lights, which were glaring down exactly like the arc lamps set around a tunnel end. I could tell seats went way up above us (they going to be looking down on you) and then we were all standing there set to go and a big amplified voice said, “From Jupiter Metals, Pallas, the Hot Six,” and suddenly we all had our horns to our mouths. I put mine down and said, “‘In the Alley Blues,’” which, amplified, sounded like a single word, then put the horn up and commenced playing.
We sounded horrible. They had indirect mikes on all of us, and just playing normal mezzo forte we were booming out into the huge caven of the auditorium, so we could hear very clearly how bad we sounded. Hook was solid, and so was the kid, which was a relief; but my tone was quivering with just the slightest vibrato, and sometimes I couldn’t hear Sidney at all. And his fear was spreading to the rest of us. We knew he had to be petrified to even miss a note.
We brought “In the Alley” to a quick finish, and the applause was loud. That made me realize how big the audience was (twenty thousand, Tone-bar said) and I was more scared than ever, I could feel their eyes pressing on me, just like I can sometimes feel the vacuum when I look out a view window. I figured we’d better play one of the best songs next, so we’d get as much help from the material as possible. “ ‘Weary Blues,’ ” I said, meaning to say it to the band, since we had planned to play “Ganymede.” But the mikes picked me up anyway and I heard “Weary Blues” bounce back out of the cavern, so I just raised my horn to my lips and started; and it was probably two bars before everyone caught on and joined in. That didn’t help any.
And I myself was having trouble. The more I could hear the vibrato wavering down the middle of my tone, the worse it got, and the more I could hear it… it began to sound like an oscilloscopic saw, and I hoped it wouldn’t get out of control and break the tone completely. We got to the refrain, where “Weary” usually starts rolling, I could tell that everyone was so scared they couldn’t think about what they were playing, so the notes were coming out right by instinct, but there was no feel in them, it was like they were being played by a music box, every note made by a piece of metal springing loose.
“Weary Blues” ended and again the applause was triple forte. I stepped over to Hook and shouted, under my breath, “Let’s do ‘I Guess I’ll Have to Change My Plans.’ ” He couldn’t hear me, so I said it louder and the mikes caught me, “ ‘I Guess I’ll Have to Change My Plans.’” I announced. There was a long flurry of laughter from the audience. Hook started the intro to “Plans,” as calm as though he were playing to a crowded bar. We slid into the song and I realized how much easier it is to play fast when you’re nervous. Hook was doing fine, but his backup was trembling, barely hitting the chords. With the leisure of playing accompaniment I could look up and see the silver line of boxes that held our judges, hanging high above us; and that didn’t help either.