The Guy Downstairs Blows Sax

Abstract

THE GUY DOWNSTAIRS BLOWS SAX IG. W. Hawkes IWONDER WHAT'S BECOME of my first love, espedaUy on these hot nights when I scoot my sUppers off and take a plastic bowl or a piece of wood out onto the front porch and drum on it slowly. Another lovelorn insomniac a block away or on the other side of town blows an apologetic phrase from a sUde trombone or tools around on a trumpet, and then somebody whistles a rising and faUing note: a wolf whistle. The dogs take it up. They'U carry it for an hour, sometimes, before ifs quiet again. Kenny Halgren and I on those summer nights before high school started would sneak from our houses and run to the park and climb Uke astronauts up into the dark trees under the stars. I wish I could do that now, but I wasted aU my romantic nights in that innocence with Kenny before I was old enough to know what romance is. When I got Jack ten years later (or when Jack got me), I expected him to be freckled and fifteen and willing to run around in the dark but of course he couldn't be. And Kenny was long gone, disappearing into his father's car dealership and a fraternal order of businessmen and an invisible, comfortable chaos of monthly büls and chüdren. In that summer with Kenny there came a night so hot and clear that each of a hundred milUon suns seemed to shine on me. I sat on the roof outside my bedroom window and waited for midnight by counting them. The galaxy seemed reachable that once. Midnight passed without my knowing. "GUda." It was Kenny, of course, come to find me. I'd missed our rendezvous. "Come on." "What time is it?" "Nearly one." I heard the reproach in that—that forty-five minutes of the night had been wasted, that we'd missed night-things we could never have back. "Coming down," I said, and sUd to the gutter, tennis shoes squeaking on shingles, and dropped into the ivy Td talked my father into planting. I crashed into the dark waxpaper leaves 168 · The Missouri Review and lay on my back, pretending to be dead, or paralyzed. I wanted Kenny to lift me. He waited for me to think about spiders and get up. "I could have been dead," I told him. "I know how you're going to die, and that's not it." "What do you—" "Come on." Kenny ran off, jumping imaginary logs and ducking under invisible trees, and I ran after him, jumping those same logs, ducking those same trees. "What do you mean, you know how Tm going to die?" I asked, after we'd reached the park and slowed down. "I dreamed it." I walked behind him, worried. We took our dreams seriously. "How, then?" "The Viet Cong." He shook his head. "Horrible." "TeU the truth." "Okay, that's not it." "You don't know, do you? You don't know how I end up." "Sure I know," he said, but instead of saying anything more he got down on his hands and knees and began to work his way around the bandstand. I sat on the gUder. If he wasn't telUng, I couldn't make him. He probably didn't know—hadn't dreamt it— and needed time to think up a good Ue. Kenny knew it would have to be just right: unordinary and possible. "Two bits!" Kenny said, holding up a coin. MoonUght gUnted on something that could have been a nickel or a slug. Or his own quarter, pulled from a pocket. I pushed myself in the gUder and, leaning out on the backswing, caught a swarm of stars. Kenny made his slow progress around the bandstand and was under my feet when he said, "Holy Jesus God." "What?" "DoUaroo." "You're lying." He held it up. It was the kind of night when something Uke that could happen. "Halfsies," I said. He bared his teeth in the dark. "AUsies." He tucked it into his pocket. I didn't complain: it would show up tomorrow or...