The Band Played On by C. Shook - HTML preview

THE BAND PLAYED ON

I'm playing trombone in a little five-piece combo at Benny's Bar and Grill when it happens. At the time we are slightly enlarged by the presence of four of Bill Gundry's boys who are working out at the park and have dropped by to sit in after they have finished, and also we have present Eddie Smith and Mart Allen, who are a clarinet and trumpet from The Pines.

Benny's is the local hangout for all the musicians in town, which is the main reason I'm playing there; one night Whiteman himself shows, when his band is working a theatre job at the Palace.

During the early part of the night we play our own arrangements off the paper, but after about one o'clock we are liable to be jamming with any of the boys who can find seats—like this night I'm telling you about.

When I first notice it we are giving out on the Jazz Me Blues, which is a fine ensemble number, and we are hitting it in a fast Dixieland. I'm ragging the beat and I can feel the old slush pump tremble, but I figure it's because I'm really solid at the moment and I keep on sending.

Well, we clean up the Jazz Me's and I'm still hot so I hit right on the B-natural for Stardust, with the boys jumping in, and we take it slow and mellow through one chorus together. Then I stand up for a solo on the second, and that is when it happens.

I don't know exactly what takes place, but I'm riding as I reach out for a high one that's really out of the world. I feel the pump tremble again, and then what happens is that I am really out of the world.

I mean I'm actually out of the world!

The vibrations from the trombone shoot right up my arms, and then my whole body is shaking. I can't stop it. The lights fade away and I'm trembling so I can't even hear the music ... and then I'm not shaking any more, but Benny's is not there or I'm not there, and it is daylight, which is crazy because it is only two A.M.

I am still kind of weak as I look around, and then I'm weaker still. The least thing, I figured, was that I had had a spasm or something and was in a hospital and it was the next day. But when I look around again I know this is no hospital. I'm lying on a big flat rock and I am dressed just as I was at Benny's. I even have my slip-horn beside me.

But the thing that gives me the jumps is the grass. It is all purple. And the trees and everything around have purple leaves where they should be green. I look at my coat. It is a light blue. My pants are black and my skin is white. Then I look at the grass beside me. I reach out and pick a handful. It is plenty purple all right. And I'm thinking as I look at it there in my hand that there is no place in the world where the trees and plants are purple. No place in the world....

I know I am not asleep, but tell myself, "whenever you read about anything like this happening, the hero always thinks he is asleep at first and pinches himself to find out whether he is or not." So I reach over for my slush pump and give it a good blast. I hear it all right. Just to make sure, I do pinch myself lightly, but it is no soap. I am here and the grass is still purple. I get up off the rock and walk about.

When I stand up I find that I am in a large meadow with nothing more in sight than the rocks here and there and a few trees. The purple grass is nearly knee-high. There is no sense in staying where I am, so I pick up my trombone and begin hiking. After I have walked a couple of miles, maybe, I come to a river. I am not surprised to find that the water is a deep yellow. Nothing will surprise me now.

There must be some settlement along this river if there is anyone living around here, I figure, so I follow along the way the water is flowing. Three or four hours I tramp, and this is something I am not used to. My feet are getting plenty beat and I take up the old bleater and try The Stars and Stripes Forever, the only march I can think of. This helps me stumble along in two-four time a while, but it uses up what wind I have left, and pretty soon I am forced to sit down and rest.

Well, I guess I doze off while I am resting, for when I come out of it I find myself tied up tighter than a drum, and there in front of me are four men or animals or something examining my trombone.

"Hey," I say.

At that they turn around and stare at me and I stare even harder at them. And then I bust out laughing. For they look like four grown up Donald Ducks. They have duck bills for mouths, and their feet are webbed, but they have arms instead of wings. Their bodies are covered with feathers, except for their heads which have a greenish skin and would almost be human if it weren't for those bills and the green color.

They begin to gab among themselves and I am surprised because I am expecting to hear them quack like ducks. Their voices are low-pitched and they talk way down in their throats something like German, but though I don't understand it, I know it isn't. They are talking about me, I can tell, and finally one of them comes over and unties my feet and legs. But he leaves my arms fastened. He motions for me to get up. I do and we start down the river with one of them carrying my slip-horn and walking beside me, and the others floating on the water like their barnyard relatives. This is the way we come to their town.

It is only a short distance before the river widens considerably, and I can see that it is dotted with little islands. The three men who are swimming come close to shore and they walk with the one guarding me, pointing out at one of the islands as they speak. I gather that they don't know how to take me out there. One of them gestures at the water and then at me, but I shake my head no. They gab some more.

Finally one of them hops into the water and swims to the nearest island. He is back in a flash with about ten other duck men who immediately begin gabbing excitedly as soon as they see me. The one holding my trombone says something to them and they shut up and get back into the water. They push me to the edge of the bank and then one of them takes hold of my legs and pulls me into the river on his back. He almost sinks before the others can grab me too and help him out, and even at that they are as far down as low 'E on the doghouse when they start out for the large island almost in the center of the river. This must be their main village, I figure, and it turns out that I am right. Once we get to the village they untie my arms and hand me my horn. I guess they figure I can't get off the island now.

Well, I don't know what I'm in for, but whatever it is, it is postponed for a while because they take me to a small hut and leave me. There is nothing in the hut except a pile of pale purple straw in one of the corners, but I don't need anything else. I am plenty weary and I flop on the straw and am asleep in a minute.

When I awake again, it is morning. I get up and walk to the door and there are four or five of the duck men standing nearby. They see me come out and they smile, but when I start to move about, they point back into the hut and so I go back in and sit down. I am still sitting there when some others come in with some trays of food. These are a lot lighter green in the faces and I guess they must be the women of the race. They have a lot of stuff that looks like purple lettuce, and different vegetable-looking things on the trays, and they act as if I am to eat them. After I taste them they are not so bad. I even drink a cup of the yellow water, and it is not so bad either, only sweeter than I would want ordinarily.

Once I have finished, I go back outside. Right in front of the door is the duck man which carried my slush pump on the walk yesterday, and when he sees me he smiles and comes over and hits me on the back with his hand. I do the same to him and he smiles wider. This means we are friends, I figure, like shaking hands, so I smile too. He motions for me to come with him.

Some of the others come with us, and we walk all around the village which is not so large. My friend seems to be the head man. He walks with me, and the rest stay a little behind. I am being treated like I have the key to the city. All around are the small huts like the one I slept in, and there isn't much else to the town except for a couple of larger buildings which are made of the same purple wood that the huts are made of. I figure that if three people occupy each hut, there are maybe six hundred altogether in the town. There are some other villages on the islands I can see, but they are not so large.

After we have toured for an hour or two, the chief takes me to one of the large buildings and we go inside. City hall, I think. And sure enough we go right to the mayor's office, which is a little room partitioned off from the rest. There are a couple of stools or something there, and the mayor hops up on one with his thin legs underneath him. I sit on the other. He smiles and I smile, and I think this is getting pretty dull and maybe it would be better if he weren't so friendly because anyway I would have some action. I think I will get away and go over and try a few numbers on the horn.

Finally after we sit there smiling for some time, he points to himself.

"Ogroo," he says. His name.

So I hit myself on the chest and tell him my name.

Then he walks around the room and points to the stools and the table and the walls. He says words at each one. He is trying to teach me their language, so I repeat each one after him. We play this little game for quite a while and then we have food brought in. While we are eating, Ogroo is telling me the name of what I am chewing on and it doesn't taste nearly as good as it did when I knew it was plain food only.

When we finish eating, Ogroo gets up and takes me back to our hut. I am supposed to stay there, I see. Anyway I think I will get out a few riffs just to keep in practice, so I go inside for my slush pump. It isn't there.

So this is why the so and so was keeping me away all the time he did, I say to myself. I am plenty burned up, but there is nothing I can do.

When Ogroo shows up the next morning, I try to tell him about it, but he pretends not to understand. Instead we go through the same routine as the day before, only we eat in another room and he shows me some new words.

Well, the horn doesn't show up and I can tell my lip is slipping out of shape. It is now three weeks since I got into this place and I have nothing different. I am able to talk to the duck men, though, and I will say for Ogroo that he is a good teacher since I am never more than a poor C in languages when I am in school.

And then one day Ogroo says to me, "Mac, I am happy to tell you that we have located the object which you call a trombone. One of the men took it and has had it hidden. He feared it was a thing of evil power. I assured him it was not, though I was not so sure myself. I hope that I was correct."

"Ogroo, old boy," I tell him, "the trombone is strictly a thing of good power as I will show you if you will produce it. It is a thing of music."

"Why, Mac," says Ogroo, "why did you not say this before. We have music too. It is our great pride."

Now during the time the mayor has been educating me, there is one of the large buildings which I have never been in. I have asked Ogroo about this and he has always said they were saving it as a surprise for me. But now he gets up and starts out the door.

"You will know of the surprise at last," he says.

And he leads me to the big barn which has always been closed.

Well you can hang me for a long-hair when we get inside, for there are about two hundred of the duck people shuffling around like a flock of jitterbugs, and ten or twelve players are giving out with some corny rhythm on a raised platform for a bandstand. They have about three-fourths percussion, mostly tom-tom-like drums, but there are a few gut buckets of some kind which they do not appear to play for nothing.

Ogroo looks at me.

"Is it not magnificent?" he says.

"Well," I say, "it is all right, but where I come from it is done in a slightly different manner. I shall be happy to show you if you will kindly produce my horn."

I can hardly wait to lay my lip into a solid beat the more I listen to these ickies peeling it off the cob, and when one of the men finally brings in old Susie, I kiss her lovingly. She is in fine shape.

Old Ogroo stops the noise. He makes an announcement, and everything is quiet as I step up with my slush pump. It is like Goodman at Carnegie Hall.

Everybody crowds around as I give out with the Royal Garden Blues. I see I have them overcome and I begin to send softly as I hear one of the boys pick up the beat in the background. He is not so awful at that. After I have taken two choruses, one of the gut buckets has picked up the melody and I dub in the harmony for him. The crowd is beginning to sway slightly when I slide into Rose Room and pretty soon they are on the jump until it is worse than a bunch of the alligators at a Krupa concert. All in all it is a very successful performance indeed.

By the time I have finished, I see that I have first chair cinched, and the crowd is eating out of my hand.

This is by no means the last performance I give. I soon have the duck men in the band playing the best jive they can give out with, but it is rather sorry without any reeds and only one brass. They are entirely unable to play any wind instruments, though, so I am forced to make the best of it.

We play for three or four hours, and when old Ogroo and I finally leave the hall, I am cheered all down the line. I am really terrific.

"Mac," Ogroo tells me when we are outside, "you are wonderful. We appreciate music and in fact it is the biggest thing in our lives here. But you are lucky that we are the ones that found you on your arrival and not the animal men from the woods. They are very ignorant, and your trombone would have meant nothing to them."

Well, this is the first time I have heard about these animal men, and I figure maybe they are a little closer to civilization than Ogroo thinks. I ask him about them.

"They are our enemies," he says, "and are much stronger than we. They control all the land surrounding us, but on the water we have the best of them and they never try to attack us here. However we must venture into the forests sometimes, and then we are in constant danger. Many of us are killed or captured each year."

I think no more about this, however, and I spend my time playing for the concerts they have every day. I am very popular with one and all. But a few weeks afterwards, Ogroo asks me to join one of their expeditions into the forests.

"We have to gather our monthly food crop," he says. "And everyone in the community has to do his share. As you are now one of us, it is only fitting that you come along."

Well, of course I clap Ogroo on the back and tell him I will be very pleased to go, and, in fact, I am not worried much about their enemies because I am a good hundred pounds heavier than any of the duck men and I figured I will be plenty for these animal people to handle. As it turns out, I am right in this respect, but I hit one bad note which almost costs me my life and very possibly does so for my friends.

There are about twenty of us that start out. Each one is carrying two large baskets made out of the purple reeds which grow in the swampy lowlands of the islands. Before we begin, I tell Ogroo that I will swim over if he will carry my baskets, but he does not understand what I mean until I dive into the river and demonstrate. This exhibition is a great surprise to everyone, as they have never seen anything like it before. When I have climbed out on the other bank, the rest of the party jumps in and floats over rapidly. Then we begin walking toward the deep purple forests.

We hustle around all morning, and there is no trouble. What we are gathering is some kind of mushroom that grows around the foot of the trees, and we are looking for certain vegetables which have to have the shade to amount to anything. It is in the afternoon shortly before we are ready to depart that one of the men who is acting as a lookout gives the alarm. There is a group of animal men hunting in the woods and they have spotted us. I am curious to see how these men appear and I hang back some while the others run as fast as they can on their webbed feet toward the river; they are luckily near the water, for they could never outdistance these land people.

Well, I know I can catch up, so, as I say, I wait a couple of seconds. But when I have a gander at our enemies, I am off faster than a sixty-fourth beat, and it is none too soon. As a matter of fact, it is a wonder that I am able to run at all, for what I see charging at me is about ten big two-headed monsters running on four legs sometimes, and sometimes on two. They are not quite as large as a man when they stand up, but they are enough to send me heading for the river. I dive in just before they get there and I am churning the water like the Queen Mary when I hit the island. Then I look around to see what has happened. The monsters are lined up at the edge of the river watching us, but they do not try to cross over. They are pointing at me and acting excited, and Ogroo laughs.

"They have never seen anything like you," he says. "But we are safe now for they cannot—what did you call it—swim?"

I say that is very lucky indeed, as they are remarkably tough appearing babies, but we do not bother any more with them and pretty soon they have disappeared into the forests. It is over a week later that I realize the bad note I hit and what it is going to do to us.

I am sitting on a rock near the island's edge this morning trying to work a little oil out of some plants I have found. I wish to apply some of this to my slip-horn, as the action is getting somewhat gummy and I have neglected to bring any of these necessities with me when I ride out of Benny's. While I am doing this, I see some of the animal men come out of the forest and start toward the river. This is odd since I am told they never do this. They do not see me so I stay where I am, and I see two of them talking and arguing with the others. These two seem to have some idea, and the rest are telling them no and shaking all their heads to do it. It must be a real argument, I think, with two mouths to speak with at the same time. I wonder if one of these animals could get two part harmony with a pair of trumpets, but then I recall that they are strictly ickies, as old Ogroo has explained to me.

So I watch them some more, and pretty soon the two who are talking most jump right into the river and begin to throw their legs up and down and flail their arms, and they are soon moving across the water just as if they could swim. In fact they are swimming, and this excites me greatly since Ogroo has said they could not do this. I get up quick and begin to hunt Ogroo and luckily I find him right away. I tell him what is taking place and he is also greatly excited.

"I'm afraid we have done it now, Mac," he says to me as we run back to where I saw the animal men. "Those creatures are highly imitative—it is the only way they seem to gain any new skill—and they must have been thinking over what they saw when they watched you swim away from them last week."

By the time he has told me this we are back where I have left my trombone, and are just in time to see the last of the group jump into the river. They are able to make the nearest island, which has a small village of maybe fifty people. Well, I do not like this part of my story much and I will cut it short. What happens is that the animal men wipe out that little village in ten minutes and right before our eyes. The animals are extremely happy and we see them grinning with their ugly double faces as they return to shore.

"Quick," says Ogroo, "we have only a little time. They will bring the rest of their tribe immediately and attack all the rest of our islands. We must hide."

I grab my horn and we hurry to notify our own village. But we are stopped. There is no place to go.

Then we hear the menacing roar of the animal men. As we turn, they can be seen jumping into the river one by one. There are hundreds of them.

I turn resignedly to Ogroo. I start to tell him that we must get something to defend ourselves with, but the people are so paralyzed with fear that I know we can never do it. And then before I can say anything, I see the villagers coming slowly toward Ogroo and me. They seem very angry indeed.

Ogroo speaks hurriedly. "They are after you, Mac. You're the one that showed the animal men how to swim and they are after you. In the state they are in, you will probably be killed. I'll try to reason with them, but it is almost certain to be useless, for they might even be after me. I have been your sponsor."

He claps me on the back and then starts toward his people. I do not know what to do. I can see a detachment of the animal people not more than a hundred yards off shore, and the duck men are moving angrily toward me not much farther away. I see them push Ogroo aside as he begins to say something to them.

I move my trombone nervously. And suddenly I see my only chance. I am shaking before I start, but I fit the mouth-piece to my lip and begin to blow. I take a fast scale and I hit the B-natural for Stardust at least an octave higher than it was ever played before. I have got to ride high and fast.

Well, I close my eyes and I am shaking so that I hardly notice the vibrations of the horn begin, but when I reach the E in the third measure, I know I am feeling what I felt in Benny's. So I keep pushing it, and the last I remember I am trying to reach the high C closing.

That is when I pass out....

When I come to this time, I am almost afraid to open my eyes. My ears are still buzzing, and I am just beginning to realize weakly what has happened when I hear voices around me which are not part of the score. They are speaking in English. I open my eyes then, and look around.

I find that I am surrounded by a crowd of people who are saying to one another to give him air and to take it easy, and I perceive that I am on a city sidewalk, and in fact, as I look up, I see that it is somewhere on Fifty-Second Street. A perfect landing for a tail gate artist, I think as I sit up.

When the crowd sees me do this they move in even closer, all the time telling one another to give me air, but finally one of them claims that he is a doctor and he helps me up and I go with him and another man in uniform who is probably a policeman. They tell me that they are taking me to a hospital, and I do not remember much after that. When I wake up again, I am in the hospital.

A doctor has hold of my wrist, and when he sees me open my eyes he says, "How are you feeling now?"

I tell him okay.

"Well," he says, "you seem to have had quite a shock, and perhaps you do not want to discuss it now, but your manner of dress and this instrument which you have brought with you have excited my curiosity no little."

I see that my trombone is on the table near him.

"Why no, I do not mind telling you," I say, "though you might find it hard to believe what I have gone through. But first—where am I and what month is it?"

The doctor lets go of my wrist.

"You are in New York," he says, "and it is September of the year Twenty-five O Seven."

"Just a minute," I say, "I must misunderstand you. I thought you said the year was Twenty-five O Seven."

"That is what I did say," says the doc.

"But that cannot be true," I tell him. "Why I was born in 1914 and it is not possible for me to be living at such a period in history."

He picks up my wrist again.

"You are a little excited," he says, "and I think you had better get a bit more rest. Then we can talk this thing over later."

I see him say something to the nurse who is standing in the doorway all this time, and she nods as he goes out. I start to call to him but I figure it is no use. So I go back to sleep.

The second time I wake up, the doc is back and he has four other men with him. They are sitting in chairs around the room watching me; as soon as they see I am awake they come over to my bed.

"These men are very much interested in your case," the doctor tells me. "I have been telling them about your statement and the strange circumstances attending your appearance on Fifty-Second Street today. Now I feel that you have had enough rest and I want you to tell them the entire story."

Well, I know they will figure I am off the beat, but I start at the beginning and relate the whole story anyway. They do not say a word until I have finished. Then they look at each other and have a whispered session on the other side of the room. Finally one of them speaks up.

"Mr. McRae," he says, "we want to question you a little further if you don't mind. Will you please put on your clothes and come with us?"

I do like they say since there is nothing else for me to do, and when I am dressed they take me down the hall to a big light room which is practically all glass, and they ask me to sit down at a large table.

"Now, Mr. McRae," the first doc says, "I want you to do something for me."

He hands me ten little blocks of different sizes and informs me that I am to place them in the proper holes in a board which he has ready for just that purpose. I do as he asks.

These seems to surprise him, but he is all set with another test, and I spend the rest of the afternoon playing these little games, until I am plenty weary of it and I say so to him.

"Well," he says, "as you likely know, we have been trying to determine your sanity. I will say that you have demonstrated yourself to be entirely normal."

"That is fine," I say, "but now that we have decided that will someone kindly tell me what is this business about Twenty-Five O Seven—and what has been happening to me anyhow."

Another of the doctors answers me.

"There seems to be only one other explanation," he says, "one which we are reluctant to accept but which we must consider if your story is true. You have been in a fourth dimension. The passage of time there is something that we know nothing of, and it is possible that the few months you spent in it were equivalent to the centuries which have passed in this dimension. You have apparently evolved a unique and purely personal method for entering and leaving the fourth dimension, and since it seems entirely dependent on your own physical skill together with a large element of chance, it is of little value for scientific exploitation. That is the pity."

While he is giving out this statement, the rest of the doctors grow very excited, and soon as he has finished they begin throwing questions at him about curvature of space and Neilson's theory and a lot of other stuff which is very confusing to me indeed.

Finally I stop them.

"If you will kindly return my trombone," I tell them, "I will be on my way, as I do not know anything of all this and I would like to get out and see what it is like in Twenty-Five O Seven A.D."

"Of course, of course," says the first doctor who is the one who brought me to the hospital. "It is very thoughtless of us. I shall get your instrument and you can come home with me until you are able to adjust yourself to our way of living. It will be a great pleasure to show you what we have accomplished in the time since you can remember, though I must say that none of us has done what you have."

He laughs a little at that, and I figure he is a nice guy, so I say I will be happy to accept his offer.

I go home with him and he introduces me to his wife who is a very nice appearing female. He tells her all about me and he keeps saying how remarkable it is all the time.

It is the next morning when I come down to breakfast that I meet the doctor's daughter, who is a very lovely little number of about twenty, and I see that my stay is going to be a very pleasant one indeed.

She says, "Dad has been telling me all about you, Mr. McRae, and I'm going to see to it that you really see the New York of Twenty-Five O Seven. He wants to drag you to a lot of stuffy old lectures and scientific conventions, and exhibits you like a freak, but I'm taking charge today."

I remark that that will be fine.

Well, we start right out, and it is amazing what has been done in my absence. Ann—that is the little number's name—tells me about the change in one thing and another; they are now taking vacations on Venus and Mars, and it is merely a matter of a couple of hours to get to San Francisco or London. Of course this is all very interesting, but I am interested in what they are doing in the musical line. I tell Ann this.

"We are in luck," she says, "for there is a concert tonight up in Albany and you will be able to hear all the finest music there."

"I do not wish to hear the long hairs play," I tell her. "Let us go down along Fifty-Second Street and listen to a little barrelhouse. That is my racket."

"There is no musical organization on Fifty-Second Street," Ann says. "We do all our listening and looking at concerts like this one in Albany, and it is the only sort of music we have."

By this time we are home, so I ask Ann if she would like to hear how we played it back in the Twentieth Century. She replies that she would, but not to let her father, the doc, know about it because he is something of a bug on the modern music and considers the old style quite degenerate.

I laugh at this. "What he means by the old style is probably something I have never heard," I say. "You must remember that I am almost six hundred years old, so my style is practically antique. Why, your father did not even know that my horn was a musical instrument until I told him my story, and it is indeed a shame that there are not a few old Beiderbecke platters around so you all could hear what you've been missing."

Well, I have not played the old slush pump since I escaped from the fourth dimension, so I am careful when I pick it up, but after I have tried a few runs I say I am all set. Ann is very curious, and she makes me tell her how it works, as it seems they use instruments altogether different in these concerts we are going to. I explain how the wind goes around and all, and then I move into I'm Getting Sentimental Over You. I am very mellow, and T. Dorsey couldn't have sounded any better in the little concert I give. Ann is very overcome.

"It is beautiful," she says when I have finished. "Are there words to it?"

I tell her there are, but that I do not know them, so she hums softly as I take another chorus. She has a lovely voice, and I say that tomorrow I will write down the words to some other numbers and let her practice them with me.

When the doctor hears we are going to the concert that evening, he says that he wishes to come along. We get to Albany in about five minutes, so fast that I see nothing in the journey once we have left the New York airport where the doc keeps his plane, and we enter the auditorium in perfect time. As we go in, I am very surprised to see everyone staring at me, since I have borrowed one of the doctor's suits for the occasion and look just like anyone else. And then everyone stands and begins cheering me until I am very embarrassed indeed. I look at Ann and the doctor. They are both smiling.

"You know now that you have become a celebrity," whispers Ann. "We didn't want to let you know right away, but the papers have been full of your story."

So I smile and bow to the crowd, which keeps on clapping. It is very pleasing.

Finally, however, the noise stops and the curtain raises. There on the stage are about thirty or forty musicians, and behind them is a large screen like in a moving picture house. Also there are a lot of electric cords in sight, and I cannot figure what they are for until I notice that each instrument is wired like an electric guitar.

When the conductor comes on, everybody claps a little more, and then he turns to the orchestra. What I hear after that is something I never expect to hear in my life. All those electric instruments begin to vibrate, and on the screen behind them all sorts of shapes and colors begin to flash and then disappear. This keeps up as long as the number lasts.

"You are now seeing music as well as hearing it," the doctor tells me.

"I never saw any like that before," I say. "All the music I've ever seen has been the regular dot variety; do the men play from those flashes?"

"Why no," the doc smiles. "Those symbols that you see are the result of the electric impulse as the musicians strike certain notes on their instruments. They are never the same, and to me they are vastly intriguing. Strictly, it was lousy."

"Oh," I say.

The following day Ann informs me that we are going on a picnic and asks me will I please bring my trombone along and teach her a few songs.

About eleven o'clock we get in Ann's plane, and in no time we are down in Virginia in a nice little spot by a small stream.

"I often come down here," Ann says. "It is one of the best places I know."

There is something that seems awfully strange to me, and I finally realize that it is the green grass of the meadow and the trees, after the icky purple I have been used to for the past few months. I tell Ann about this and about how beautiful the green looks, but I add that it is still not as lovely as she is.

She says that is very nice, and then as I stand up from spreading the picnic cloth, she is standing beside me, so I put my arms around her and then I am kissing her and she is kissing me and it is very pleasant indeed. I see that this is much better than any fourth dimension.

Finally we get around to eating the lunch Ann has brought, and I keep saying how lovely she is, which I also mean. And she is saying I am pretty fine too, and we pass some little time like this.

But after a while Ann says, "Mac, will you play for me now? I love to hear you."

So I say I will if she will sing and I give her the words to The St. Louis Blues, which I have written out. I hit it soft and easy for one chorus to give her the melody, and then she takes the beat. Well, I have not realized it before, but her voice is plenty schmalz and it is a shame she is not living in my time, for she would be a cinch to panic them anywhere.

After that she does The Memphis Blues also, and she has me riding beautifully to keep her up there. She is wonderful.

"You are the one who is wonderful," she says. "I have never heard music like you can get out of that trombone. Play something else, darling, won't you?" I slip into If I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate, and as I play, Ann moves over beside me.

"Lovely," she whispers.

With that I am really carried away and I hear her humming softly as I modulate into Tea for Two. I am giving it a real ride, and then I feel it coming over me again. I am in a panic. I try to stop playing, but I can't, and my body is vibrating something terrible.

I dimly hear Ann crying, "Mac, Mac, ..." as I sink off.

That is the last I can remember....

When I come out of it this time, someone is pounding me on the back.

"Ann?" I say hopefully, but I know inside that it will be useless.

"Beautiful going, Mac. Beautiful," someone is saying.

"What?" I ask blankly.

"That Stardust. Boy, you were really out of the world on that one."

Then I open my eyes and look up. It is Ernie Martin, our sax player, who has the chair next to me in Benny's.

I look around. I am back in Benny's. As I put down my slip-horn there is a scattering of applause from the tables.

Someone shouts at me. I close my eyes, but the noise is still there. I keep my eyes closed, and then I hear music.

Ernie is hitting me with his elbow.

"Get in," he says.

I hear the boys beating out Rosetta.

"Take it up," say Ernie. "Get hep, kid."

"Me?" I says sort of foggy like. "Oh, no—not me. Leastways not tonight."

I pick up old Susie and walk to the door. I wonder if maybe there's such a thing as being too hep.