Damon Knight - Orbit 18

“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 cavern 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 back-up 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.

We moved quickly into That’s a Plenty, and I could tell we’d calmed down enough to think about the music; after your body pumps full of adrenalin, soaks you in sweat, and shakes you like the ague, there’s not much more it can do, you’ve got to calm down some; but that maybe wasn’t helping us, since now we had to make the music ourselves, rather than leave it to instinct. I was still shaky enough that when I got to the triple-tonguing in the trumpet break, it actually seemed slow to me, and next time around I fitted in another note, hammering them with two double-tongues. This seemed to perk up the band (“Put chills down my spine,” the kid said later), but we still sounded ragged; I knew if we continued like this we were in trouble. And Sidney was still missing phrases. I don’t think I’d ever heard him miss more than a note or two in my whole life, and here he was squeaking through bars at a time, playing like he had a crimp in his throat.

When we finished the kid waved me over to him. He raised a hand in the air and lowered it, which was apparently the signal needed to get the mike men off us. The kid was completely relaxed. He looked like he was having a good time.

“Your clarinet player is dying,” he said. “Does he know Burgundy Street Blues?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Maybe you should have him play that. If he had to play a song by himself he’d be sure to calm down some.”

I turned around. “Sidney, you ready to play Burgundy Street?” He shook his head vehemently.

“Come on, Sidney,” Hook said from beside him. “That’s your song.” He turned to the audience, and the kid quickly lifted a hand. "The Burgundy Street Blues, ” Hook announced.

Now Burgundy Street, like Just a Closer Walk with Thee or Bucket’s Got a Hole in It, is a single-strain tune, just an eight-bar melody; and it’s the variations that a clarinet player works in as he repeats it, again and again, that make the song something special. The first couple of times Sidney went through it, I could barely hear him. He was playing the melody, as simple as possible, and the sound he was making was more breath than tone. I didn’t think he’d finish. He shifted toward us as if he wanted to turn his back on the audience, but Hook threw in a couple bars of harmony to bolster him, and when he started the strain a third time he took hold of himself and bore down; and that time, though the notes quivered and never got over pianissimo, he could be heard.

The kid was hopping up and down beside me as if he couldn’t wait to start playing again. “Damn that man plays fine clarinet,” he whispered to me. Suddenly I realized that if you didn’t know Sidney you might think he was playing warbly on purpose, in which case it sounded all right. Apparently this occurred to Sidney too. Each time around he played a little louder, tried a few more variations, gathered a little more confidence. The fifth time around he usually played a variation filled with chromatic runs; he went ahead and tried them, and they came out sharp and well articulated. Amplified like he was he could hear as clearly as anyone how good he sounded—he was learning what I’d already discovered, that even though you’re scared, the notes come out. He began to take advantage of the new acoustics, building up till he filled the auditorium with sound, then dropping back so fast the mike men were lost, and he was as silent as piano keys pushed down.