Bad Saxophone
by Kimm Brockett Stammen
A man tried to sell me a bad saxophone.
I’d seen his ad on Craigslist, and I texted and suggested we meet in a really crowded public place: broad daylight Saturday, on the sidewalk in front of a Target. Because a girl can't be too careful.
The guy was a dick. Precisely cut, salted black hair, ironed button-down shirt. Did not use contractions. Called me "Miss" and made reference to Sousa. Said he’d taught high school band years ago and unfortunately, I believed it. I've seen guys like him swishing a baton through the air thinking it makes them right and powerful, instead of simply on the side opposite youth and music.
He set the case down on the sidewalk, and I lifted the horn from it. It was beautifully shiny, a desirable brand, not very old. I teach middle school, in a music program with a lot of kids and hardly any money or equipment, so a lot of my free time—what there is of it, after early-morning jazz band, after-school rehearsals, evening concerts and the eternal grading—is spent shopping cheap horns. Often ones I repair myself. Someone older and less fly might become bitter. But I can't afford that; I have student loans to repay.
I slid my own mouthpiece onto the horn and played a chromatic scale. A sidewalk breeze tangled my hair and skirt. The sun, like it thought it was in a RomCom or something, burst out from behind curtains of cloud. Shoppers walked past lugging lumpy bags with red bullseyes on them, and they turned and half-smiled as I blew into the sax. Sousa-man frowned. The instrument fought back, but I tried a few Sandborn licks anyway, just to feel alive, just to wail against the cement all around me. It was effort, against an instrument that didn't seem to be working right—but still, people stopped, stunned, as my melodies swirled. For a few glorious instants my feet left the pavement; I was soaring around, notes boiling and modulating, clacking keys hurtling out protesting rasping sweet phrases. After a wild, rippling tangle of notes I reached up for a climactic altissimo C. But the instrument was breathy and tough, like the principal of my school when he's talking budget—which is all he talks about, frankly—and instead of an ethereal high note my phrase ended on a stodgy fart.
I yanked the thing out of my mouth. Someone had messed with it, bad.
The audience that had gathered sighed and walked off, smirking at the dumb chick who couldn't reach the high notes. I turned the saxophone upside down and peered at the pads, testing out how they fit against the brass tone holes. Mostly they didn’t, and yet they were new. Those pads would let all a player's beautiful air, all that energy, seep out, wasted.
“Did you fix this yourself?”
Sousa-man puffed out his chest. “Gave it a complete overhaul.”
I imagined him tinkering in his basement with defenseless musical instruments, and something bubbled inside me that sure wasn't music. “It’s unplayable.”
He glared at me over his glasses. “$550.”
In churning frustration, I took the saxophone apart and set it back in its case. Shut the lid on it, like a child's future.
But the sun still kind of sparkled on the concrete, people still trudged back and forth just waiting for something cool to happen, and I thought hey, I'm young, I have energy. I'm not a defeatist. “It needs a lot of work," I said. "I could give you maybe $200.”
“You offer me crap!” He grabbed up the case in both hands and brandished it at me. Something loose in it rattled.
I backed up a step. The sun, knowing its script, ducked behind clouds.
I may be 23, but I've seen some things. I spent adolescence listening to Bach cello sonatas, Pacquito d'Rivera, Eugene Rousseau playing Concertino da Camera, and getting teased mercilessly for it by dolts and adults. I spent some more years learning to play and to teach, my musician friends working three jobs to try and stay in state college, sometimes living in their cars and catching all the recital receptions so they could live off stale cookies and cheap wine. When I got this job—a real job, not a gig—I thought the hard part behind me. But my kids come to music class without paper, pencils, reeds or sleep, and when I'm not at school I'm either preparing for school or out gigging or trying to conjure some working instruments: things that make sound for pleasure, communicate emotion and culture, teach coordination, help my students' neurons fire better, and hopefully get them through to adulthood.
On Sousa-man, standing there rattling the saxophone case, I did what I've found works on my principal, other authoritarian weirdos, and my dad—although he still keeps telling me to go into real estate. Covering over my bitter, bubbling fury, I pulled out my innocent girl-smile. “I’m really sorry this didn’t work out.”
“I’ll sell it easy!" He glared, walked away.
He was right, I thought, as I passed the store's blaring logo on the way back to my car. Bullseye. Some parent will buy that wrecked saxophone for their kid, who will squawk and fart a lot on it without knowing why and then quit. Something—music, a small hope—will go out of that kid's life forever. The parent will whine, maybe blame some teachers, the district might shut down some more enrichment programs, but the bad saxophone will still glint in the sunlight.
Rain began sprinkling although the sun was still bright. With a slice of smile still on my face, I looked up, then back at Sousa-man, wondering what had happened to him. Had he always been mean and talentless, or had there been something in him, once, that sounded like joy? Something that brewed and gurgled up in leaping, free sound, no matter who listened or didn't or how much they did, or didn't, offer to pay. And if so, how many people it had taken to disbelieve in him, underfund him, undercut him, overwork him, or simply to quit on him and the children in his charge and care, before that bubbling turned into a rancid honk and then silence. Thinking no way was I going to turn out like that, no way, no way, another bitter bad saxophone.
Kimm Brockett Stammen's writings have appeared or are forthcoming in Litro, december Magazine, CARVE, The Greensboro Review, Pembroke, Prime Number and many others, and her work has been nominated for Pushcart and Best Short Fiction anthologies. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Spalding University. kimmbrockettstammen.wordpress.com