Going Bovine

“But what message? What am I looking for?”

“That’s for you to figure on out. Now, I’ma school this fool. Back me up.” He points to the gleaming upright bass guitar that I swear wasn’t there a minute ago.

“I—I don’t know how to play.”

“Public education,” Junior Webster says with a sigh. “No more music, just tests and tests. Well, you be all right. Just slide from here to here to here and repeat,” he says, pressing my fingers against the strings in three quick moves.

“But …”

“Trust me. You!” He points to Gonzo. “You on drums. I need all the help I can get tonight.”

Gonzo scrambles onto the scarred wooden stool behind the drums. He grabs the sticks like he means business.

“You can play drums?” I whisper to him.

“Only on Rock ’N’ Roll Simulator,” he says, wide-eyed. “But I made it to level five.”

“Tonight, I got some special friends helping me out,” Junior calls to the crowd.

“It’s one of them Last Wish thangs!” Miss D shouts next, and everybody cheers.

“Junior,” I call. “I’m serious—I don’t know how to play.”

“Sure you do, son. Just put your fingers on the strings like I showed you, let go, and keep coming back to one.”

He pushes the glasses into the pocket of my Windbreaker, puts the trumpet to his lips, puffs out his cheeks, and lets loose with a furious noise. I’ve never heard anybody play the trumpet like that ever. It’s a crazy, wonderful sound. Hard, soft, sweet, mean, desperate, joyful—a whole life in fierce melody. And I’m backing him up on bass. My fingers slide awkwardly up and down the strings. It sounds a little like a cat being skinned, but it fills in the holes, and I guess people feel too sorry for us to complain. Gonzo’s keeping the beat with his entire body, and every once in a while he mutters, “Level five, level five …”

Another sound cuts through the club. The Wizard of Reckoning has his own trumpet, and he’s matching Junior riff for riff. Notes rise and fall, swoop and soar. Junior’s dripping sweat. It slides down his cheeks and wets his collar. But he keeps swinging. I feel like I’m inside this music, and I’m starting to understand the weird, beautiful universe of jazz. It’s like that space-sky Junior showed me in his dressing room, a place so vast it seems like it couldn’t possibly be governed by any rules, but the more you’re floating in it, the more you find that it’s got its own strange, secret order to it after all.

Junior’s on fire with the music. After one amazing run, the wizard falters. The room goes quiet, and I think we’ve won. But the wizard comes back hard, and this time, it’s Junior who looks like he might go down. He staggers into me.

“You remember what I tole you, now,” he says. His feet are slow and unsteady, but he manages to get back to where he was, and the music takes on an extra dimension. It’s raw and a little scary. The wizard gives his notes the same intensity. The two of them trade riffs back and forth like fighters in the ring. And then something awful happens.

The wizard takes a deep breath and blows, and nothing comes out. At least, I can’t hear anything. But Junior clutches his chest and falls to his knees, still holding tight to his horn. Gonzo’s crashing around on the drums, making a lot of noise. I can’t play the bass anymore. My fingers have lost their sound.

“Gonzo!” I shout, and he silences the cymbals.

The wizard holds out his hand, wiggles his fingers impatiently, waiting for Junior’s golden trumpet, but quick as a whip, Junior tosses the horn to me instead, and I catch it one-handed.

Junior laughs down low in his chest; the laugh mixes with a rattling cough. The Wizard of Reckoning strides across the floor and straddles Junior’s body, towering over him. Slowly, he raises his visor. I can’t see who he is, but Junior can; his face registers surprise first, then amusement.

“I’ll be damned,” Junior says, with a weak little laugh. “Don’t that beat all?”

He wheezes once. And just like that, the old jazzman hits the floor, dead.

The crowd is stunned into silence, but not for long, because the wizard’s not letting anyone off easy. He tilts his head back, lifts his arms, and lets loose with a screeching howl that’s part freight train, part missile attack. I feel it in every cell, like a force of gravity times one hundred, pushing down on me. He brings his arms down fast and the walls explode in flame; glass shatters inward. The crowd in the club screams; they crawl over each other in their panic to escape.