A Trumpet Named Satch

Chapter 5

I had band practice later that day.  The cool thing about school was that if you could play an instrument and were in band, it counted as a class.

We had practice in a room just off the auditorium. My seat was in the back, with the trombone, French horn, and other trumpet players.  Steve sat a little off to the side with the other saxophone player.  Rainy Jackson, the girl he liked, sat with the flutists.

There was always some event going on in school, like a play or football game, that we had to prepare for.  On this particular day, we were working on music for the spring assembly. 

As we tuned up, Mr. Harris, our band instructor, walked into the classroom.

"Guys and gals, listen up.  We have a lot of rehearsing to do this afternoon, so I want you all to pay attention."  He adjusted his black metal music stand.  "The spring assembly is only three weeks away.  We have quite a few songs we still need to learn." He raised his conductor's baton.  "Trumpet players, give me an A minor."

I sat up straight, lifting my trumpet to my lips and blowing as I pressed down on its valves.  The sound was as pure as ever.

"Very good.  French horns, same thing.  A minor."

The three French horn players blew out the chord.

Mr. Harris smiled.  For a few more minutes, he had us all play the note to make sure we were ready.  I saw Rainy Jackson give Steve a quick look over her shoulder, and glanced over at him in time to see him smile at her.  It was obvious they both wanted to be more than just friends.

Band practice lasted for almost an hour.  Mr. Harris apologized for keeping us longer than our usual forty-five minutes, but I didn't mind.  I could have played for another two hours if he'd wanted.

Sometimes, after we had a really hard practice, Mr. Harris would stay a little longer after school, and Steve, Rainy and I would hang out with him.  Mr. Harris was really cool.  He knew about all kinds of music.  Of course he listened to the classics, like you'd expect, but he also listened to punk and alternative music, too.  Even though he was almost thirty years old, he listened to the same stuff Steve and I liked.  He told us incredible stories about the different rock bands he was in, and the people he had met.  He even told us a secret once: Sometimes he worked at a bar over in the next county.  Teachers weren't allowed to have second jobs, so we knew we could never tell.

We had just finished practicing that day when Mr. Harris called me over.  "Isaacs?"  He always called us by our last names, like Mr. Billings.  "I noticed you've really improved with that trumpet of yours."

I felt kind of embarrassed.  "Thanks."

I'd started learning how to play the trumpet when I was only ten years old.  After a few months, I was playing almost as well as the kids in high school marching band.  My music teacher told my parents I was a prodigy, which is a person who is really gifted at something.  She said they should encourage me as much as possible.

"You know, I see a lot of potential in you," Mr. Harris said.  "If you keep up the progress you're making, you could be one of the greats."  He sounded serious.  And Mr. Harris didn't bull-I mean, he didn't lie.  He didn't have to.
His words gave me a lot of hope.  "Like who?"

I secretly wanted Mr. Harris to give me more compliments.

"Like Louis Armstrong, for example."

"Who?"  I hadn't heard that name on any of the rock stations.

"Who!?  Louis Armstrong!"  Mr. Harris raised his eyebrows at me.  "For heaven's sake, Isaacs, you don't know who Satchmo was?"

"I think I might have heard of him."  I knew who Benny Goodman was, and he was pretty old.  "Didn't he live like a hundred years ago?"

"Satchmo was one of the greats!"  Mr. Harris was gushing.  "He had a devil-may-care way of playing the trumpet.  Boy, he was really something!"

"Did he make any records?  What rock band was he in?"

Mr. Harris laughed.  "He wasn't in any rock band.  He was strictly blues and jazz.  Look, go to the library and take out some of his records.  Listen to them.  Then you'll know why Satchmo will always be remembered as one of the greatest trumpet players ever."

"Okay."

That week I went to the library and did what Mr. Harris had told me.  Was I ever glad when I did!  Satchmo was awesome.  One day, I decided to ride my bike over to the music store up town and buy a piece of his sheet music: "Our Love is Here to Stay."

It reminded me of Jenna-well, what I wished would happen for Jenna and me.
The next week, when band practice was over, I waited for everyone to leave.  Jenna stopped by class and she and Steve left to walk home.  I finally was alone with Mr. Harris.  When I played the piece for him, he got a huge smile on his face.

"I'm tellin' you, Isaacs, one day I'm going to be reading about you!  Or seeing your name up in lights!"

"Really?"  You really had to be good to get a compliment like that from Mr. Harris.  "You think?"  Suddenly I was smiling, too. 

"Did you know Satchmo gave his trumpet a name?"

"Why did he do that?" I asked.

"I think it was because he really felt connected.  That trumpet of his was like a dear old friend."

         
It sounded like a cool idea.  I felt connected to my trumpet, too; I couldn't imagine my life without it.  Whenever I was bummed out about something, or if I was thinking about Jenna, I would just pick up my trumpet and play.  It was like a great friend to me.

Didn't it deserve a name?

I got an idea: I could name it after the greatest trumpet player who ever lived.  Satch.

What happened next was kind of weird.  Satch and I really bonded in this special way I can't describe.  All of a sudden I had a melody playing in my head, and I started playing it on Satch.  It was almost like magic.  It made me think of Jenna.

Later that night I was in my room practicing the melody that wouldn't stop running through my mind when suddenly I got this weird picture in my head.  I was going to kiss Jenna, but something wasn't right.  Just as I got close enough to kiss her, I changed into Spiderman.  It kept happening each time I pictured doing it.  I couldn't see myself following through with kissing her.

It was really frustrating.

The melody that was still flowing through my head became a whole song.  It had a bridge-that's the middle part of a song, the part that changes the key that you're playing in.  Well, Mr. Harris could explain it to you better than me.  I decided to give Satch a rest, so I put him back in his case, covering him with the little white towel my mom had given me.  Then I closed the case and put him by the side of my desk.  It was a ritual Satch and I shared every night.

Walking over to my dresser, I looked at myself in the mirror.  I'm not bad looking, but I'm not Johnny Depp, either.  He's Jenna's favorite actor.  She really started getting into him when he played Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean.
I remembered when the three of us went to see it. 

I wasn't having the same feelings for Jenna back then as I do now, but when I looked over to see what she and Steve were doing, she had this look on her face, like she was madly in love.  Her eyes were fixed to the screen and she was smiling this big smile.  I turned back to watch the movie.

By the time the third movie came out a couple of years later, I was starting to have feelings for her.  That's when I noticed how much it bothered me that she was so into Johnny Depp.

I couldn't figure out what Jenna liked about guys in pirate costumes.  She also liked this guy in our class, Zak Asher.  He was like the biggest class rebel, except the teachers always let him get away with it.  He had this way of talking himself out of trouble.  And whenever he walked by in the hall or entered the classroom late-he was always late-Jenna would do her lip-gloss hair-flippy thing.

God! I would have done anything to have that effect on her.

Anyway, I was looking at myself in the mirror and the next thing I knew-well, this part is really embarrassing.  I was trying to see what my lips would look like if I ever kissed Jenna.  I was making a kissing shape with my mouth, staring into the mirror and checking different parts of my face to see how they each looked when I was doing it.  Could Jenna ever think I was as good-looking as Johnny Depp?
I know it was weird, but I couldn't help myself.

So of course my older brother, Kenny, walked by my room just at the moment and caught me in the act!