John Domini - Highway Trade and Other Stories

So now I’m back facing front, sitting on the bench like a normal person. But my next hit of Diet Coke is much too heavy; it floods the sinuses. After that it’s straight to the cork grease and the rest of the horn. I even put the reed in my mouth so I won’t be tempted.

I mean it’s not like it’s never occurred to me, sitting here thinking, that I could just skip it today. Am I no good at all without my Sunday blow? It’s not like it’s never occurred to me, I could just keep on socking back my sassy golden can of goods till I didn’t hear the girl squealing any more. I spent a day like that recently. A Monday not a Sunday, after the last call from my lawyer about custody. Tuesday was just as bad, yeah. And when I showed up at the record store on Wednesday they sent me home. The best I could manage in fact was making my gig for the weekend. Though the people at Lunar Attraction Records & Tapes, some very good people there, they gave me back my stool. They said anybody can fall off it once.

The reed might be soaked enough by now. But I keep it there, taking my time with the chamois. I can see one or two spots that could be a little smoky after last night, but honestly, in this sunshine the horn looks so righteous that I believe I’d polish it even if I didn’t want to keep my hands busy. My Selmer Mark VI. And seeing my face reflected in the bend of the hook — my beret’s a black rubber band, just barely holding together the fat red bag of beard and mustache — that settles me some more. You know I am the kind of person, the story’s been told a thousand times. Just another white boy in love with the blues. From Boston; everybody knows how that one goes.

When I was at the university here (Eugene was the hippie dream, right?) sometimes at gigs I did a goof on that, on the kind of thing everybody knows. I called it the “Rules of Dancing.” Strictly a goof. But it worked, it got the crowd in the necessary groove, because everybody recognized exactly the stuff I was talking about. I would say like, do you people remember those dances with names? The Swim or whatever? Well for five years there, any dance with a name was no longer allowed. I’d say like, if you were over sixteen, dancing with members of your own sex was no longer allowed — not in this bar anyway. Or unless you were a gold miner in an old Western movie. Those B-movie miners, right? With the fiddle and the concertina? All they could do was clomp around, clomp and fidget, and they didn’t have anybody for partners except some other old stinking little wizened clomping miner.

Now I’m chuckling to myself. I’ve fit the reed into the holder, which means I can have a little more Diet Coke. But while I’m sipping, just sipping, I start to hear some things. Off to my left there’s the clatter-rasp of a bike chain running on after a kid hits the brakes. And in the other direction, somebody’s mother is giving orders: “Hurry dear, we’ve got to hurry.”

Oh. I should have expected this, the sun out so early in the New Year and all. But I’m blinking, surprised. My mouth still mostly dry. That sharp talk to my right turns out to be a Mommy/Daddy/ Baby, the whole unit layered in Gore-Tex and polo shirts. As near as I can tell, the poor kid had to hurry just so they could all stop and look over the park plaque together. I can’t be sure, because — when did all this happen? There’s a lot more clip-clop out on the sidewalk than I remember, and there’s squealing behind me that isn’t Carrie. I can’t be sure which family I heard, while I was sitting here trying to think how I got here. Only, the baby frowning at the plaque looks hard to budge. And the clatter to my left was definitely a bike. Over that way, four of them have pulled up. Your basic subteen flyboys. They’ve gathered in front of the dead fountain, the glum civic granite, so their day-glo handlebar grips and the lightning on their chain guards appear even spacier than usual. They’re giving me an awfully steady look.

But by now I’ve caught up to it, I just smile back. Hey brother. I don’t mind the turnout, in fact. I might like to start my time outside at an empty hour, but I realize, this isn’t Death Valley. In fact I count on drop-ins. I’m after something that isn’t just doing another set, sure, but that isn’t being alone either. And the crowd in the parks is always so different from the one in the clubs. Love to see those churchgoing clothes, so much clean natural fiber, when I catch a reflection in my raised stopper. Not to mention how it feels to get an entirely new set of faces lined up and bobbing. Talk about an old story, I’m hooked on my Sunday blow. Except today, with Carrie here—

Damage control, damage control. Would I rather not have the girl around? Would I rather not see her at all? Damage control report .

The thought sticks, it’s got claws. If I hit the Coke I won’t stop. The horn goes back down on the case, I go back up on my knees, and then I start looking truly silly. Craning my neck and worrying about whether the bench is going to fall.

It’s the people in the way, plus now there are kids to either side of that fishhook swing for the toddlers. And one of those kids, uh-oh. One of them is being pushed by an outstanding blonde number. Such a sweet-face young mom or babysitter, she’s got to be the exception to my Sunday-afternoon rule. She’s got to be a club type out of her element. I can see her earrings wink from here. I would imagine Gillard’s already cooled it on the kick-flop business, judging from how my daughter’s changed pitch. But I can’t tell for sure. Between us this granny-looking woman keeps whirling back and forth. I mean in a scarf and a shawl and an ankle length dress, whirling and waving round a bubble wand. A real Eugeney arts-and-craftser. But it’s obvious that the two or three youngsters trailing along just love her jive. A couple times now, one little boy’s even jumped and tried to catch a bubble in his mouth. So I can’t be sure about old Willy Gilly. Of course I hate him, I expect him to do dirty. But then again in this kind of crowd I feel like just as bad a hard case, myself.

Up on my knees this way, I can’t see the Mommy/Daddy/Baby sliding past. But I know what I smell like, and those claws in my head haven’t let up. I figure Daddy’s got his fist clamped tight around his spare change.

On Sundays, if I don’t get to have my blow, I feel like the lizard in the flower bed. Gillard, nothing; it started way before that. The worst time — I mean, I felt like I didn’t even deserve to be kept around — was just after the baby came. We were renting one of the professor’s houses here. No question a heavyweight house. But did that mean that, every time we brought somebody over, we had to drag them through the whole scene from the cellar to the roof-deck? Wow, would you look at that gold-fleck in the dining room. Hey, check out the scrollwork on the fireplace, that’s real brass . There were times I wanted to scream: This is somebody else’s house! I wanted to shake all over and holler: This is a sabbatical house! But then I’d notice my wife’s smile, or I’d see her lift the baby so the little girl could point out a light fixture. After that there’d be no screaming. I’d just trail behind, yumming and cooing with the others. Feeling like the meanest lizard in the whole green and peaceable Willamette Valley. Like just the most shameful thing that ever tried to get along on two legs.

My feet are getting cold, I’m spending too much time on my knees. And anyway it’s looking like my decision will be made for me.

There’s something of a crowd by the swings now, and Carrie’s in the middle of it. She’s got Gillard by the leg, complaining that he’s stopped playing. Oh, but he’s still at it. He’s got some people there grinning just to watch him make his move. I can just see him cock his hips, before that old woman waving her wand drifts by again. That girl could be jailbait, Gillard. Then one way or another he’ll take Carrie off, getting coffee or avoiding further embarrassment. And I’ll just let the rest of the day go dark.