A clarinet player finished, then studied the music. “This is cool. If I knew half as much as Elise does, I’d count myself a genius.”
Cowdrey waited for someone to laugh. It wasn’t the kind of comment kids made about each other. Someone else said, “Really!”
The rest continued to write. Cowdrey said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Maybe what they want is a well-played new piece. Soon as we finish here, break into your sections and work on this.”
For the next three days leading to the Friday concert and wedding, practice went better than Cowdrey could have imagined, and not just on the new piece either. They ascended to new heights during “March of the Irish Dragoons,” and they suddenly mastered the eighth-note quintuplets and the bi-tonal passages in “Ascensions” they’d fumbled before. Elise popped up everywhere, tweaking the music, erasing notes and rewriting passages, so every time Cowdrey rehearsed a section she had changed his pages.
On concert day, Cowdrey went to the auditorium early. He’d already realigned the chairs and moved the sections about to get the best sound balance for the new arrangements. The director’s platform could accommodate Taylor and Liz when they exchanged vows. He put his hands behind his back and circled the room. Even shoes clicking on the floor sounded beautiful in the auditorium’s acoustics. He paused at the window, which cast no reflection. Behind it, the auditorium light penetrated a couple feet into the swirling brown cloud. Cowdrey cupped his hands around his eyes and leaned against the window to peer out. At first he’d been afraid to get against the glass. What if something horrible stepped forward, resolving itself from the smoke? He couldn’t imagine an event more startling, but over the years the band had played in this room, no one had ever seen anything. Now the sinuous smoke’s motion soothed him, as if he looked into ocean waves. It was meditative.
Elise cleared her throat when she entered. She wore her marching uniform, the most formal outfit anyone in the band had. Soon, the other members filtered in, filled with anticipation, gaily bedecked in their uniforms. A grinning Taylor and bashful Liz came in last, music tucked under their arms.
As he had a thousand times before, the director brought the band to attention, hands raised, ready for the downbeat. He inhaled deeply. A good breath, he thought. Let’s all start on a good breath. Soon, they were deep into the Beatles medley. Elise had changed the music so radically the original tune vanished at times, then resurfaced later in unexpected ways. The clarinets swelled with the “Yellow Submarine” bridge as the trombones’s improvisational bars ended. Later, out of a melodious but unrecognizable tune, the xylophone led them into “Hey Jude.”
They moved through song after song. Never had the band’s sound been so tight. Every solo hit right. Even the tricky transitions flew until they reached “The King’s Feast,” the second to last piece. He wiped sweat from his forehead before leading them into the opening bars, and it wasn’t until he neared the end that he realized the French horns had played their part exactly on beat. Thomas had hit his entrance on cue. Cowdrey almost laughed in relief as he brought them to the conclusion. Thomas was safe.
Cowdrey put the baton on the podium and nodded to Elise who had already stored her flute on the stand next to her chair. She came forward solemnly, climbed the platform, then picked up the baton. Shuffling their papers, the band switched to her wedding march music. The baton’s tip pointed up. She took her own deep breath. The march began, a lingering intro that sounded nothing like a march or wedding music, but soon the drums rose from behind—Cowdrey hadn’t realized they were playing at all. He’d been paying attention to the odd harmonics in the flute and clarinet section—but there the drums were, dancing rhythms that made him shift his look to them. Then the brass opened, and the tune bounced from side to side, all in a few bars, all too quick before fading for the ceremony. Cowdrey closed his eyes. “What was that?” he thought. He almost asked her to play it again.
He stood to the side on the floor a foot below the director’s platform, Taylor and Liz’s wedding vows ready to read. On cue, the two held hands and came forward. Music swelled around them as they made their way toward the front. The musicians played with part attention on Elise and part on the young couple.
Cowdrey read a preamble, his heart in his throat, Elise’s wedding march still in his ears. Taylor and Liz exchanged vows. They kissed. As they exited, arms around each other, two drummers threw confetti, and the band played the wedding march’s coda, seeming to pick up without losing a beat. Nothing Cowdrey had ever heard sounded like this. Clarity of notes. Surprising shifts in scale. A moment where a single cornet carried the music before the band swallowed it whole, repeating the notes but changing them round so what was bright became dark, and the dark exploded like fireworks. The music filled Cowdrey’s chest, pressed cold compresses of notes to his fevered head, made him sway in fear that it would end or the band would break, but they didn’t. The music ascended and swooped and pressed outward and in. At the end, the sound flooded the room, as if to push the windows open to free the band from captivity and give them the grassy pastures Elise talked about so often, rushing toward the triumphant climax they’d been practicing for the last three days. Cowdrey heard wind caressing the tips of uncut grass. He smelled the meadow awash with summer heat. The music painted Earth and home so fully he nearly wept from it, but then it ended. Elise held them on the last note, her face lit with concentration and triumph. Her fist closed, cutting the band off, leaving the memory of her composition lingering in the air. Cowdrey could still hear it, ringing. The lights began to flicker. They loved it, he thought. He turned to salute Elise, the ringing emanating from the middle of his head.
Then, he recognized the sound in the strobe-effect lighting. It built until he thought it would burst him open, and he fell.
A short soft shock of waking.
His cheek rested against cool metal. A weight pressed against his other side. Groggily, Cowdrey sat up. He was in a bus parked in the dark. The student leaning against him groaned, rubbed her eyes, then sat up too. Other bodies stirred in front and behind them. Outside the window, a streetlight showed a long chain link fence and a sign, POLICE EVIDENCE YARD.
“My god,” said someone in a voice filled with disbelief. “We’re home.”
Someone started crying. Their voices mixed. Some whooped and yelled. Some laughed, all at once, voices and sounds mixing.
They poured from the bus into the parking lot, still in uniform, holding on to each other. A boy rattled the gate locked by a large chain and a hefty padlock. A head poked up in the lit window of the building beyond. A few seconds later two policeman carrying flashlights ran out the back door. Cowdrey started counting heads, but someone noticed before he did.
“Where’s Elise?”
For a second, the happy noise continued.
“Where’s Elise?”
Cowdrey stood on the step into the bus, looking over the crowd. One by one, they stopped talking. They didn’t appear so old now, the streetlight casting dark shadows on their faces. He stepped down, walked through them, checking each expression. No crooked glasses. No clipboard tucked under the arm.
Cowdrey pictured her alone in the empty auditorium. Were the lights still flickering? She, the one who wanted to go home the most, stood now, among the silent folding chairs, staring back at the swirling smoke behind windows. What had they wanted from us? What had they wanted?