Read Online In Zanesville by Jo Ann Beard - Free Book Online

couldn’t play an instrument with a reed—anything soaked with spit made me gag. Also, the clarinet’s
     case was too heavy; the flute was the only instrument I could carry to school when I was nine.
    I like the way the clarinet sounds, like a clear cellophane ribbon unfurling, better than the flute, which has a narrow, harassed
     sound. I do enjoy the flute itself, the beautiful silveriness of it and the fact that it goes against your lip instead of
     inside it, the brown leather case with the velvet-lined depressions where the separate pieces are laid to rest, the flexible
     stick with a wooden handle that you wrap a rag around and run through the tubes to clean them. Altogether, band is a pleasant
     experience—Mr. Wilton, the teacher, pays attention only to the first-chair musicians and the percussionists, a gang of unruly
     thick-waisted boys wielding drumsticks, gongs, and triangles. Everyone else comes under the category of Others and gets to
     follow.
    “Percussionists will
listen
and will
count,
” he says to the ceiling, arms raised. “Miss Chambers:
tenderly.
Mr. McVicken:
crisply.
Mr. Waddell:
lilting.
Others: follow.”
    He closes his eyes and begins pawing at the air, and suddenly the sound of “Greensleeves” is rising up and wheezing around
     us as we labor along. I like to play hunched over, with one elbow resting on a knee, the flute pointed down at the floor.
     Not everyone gets into marching band, and we have no idea why we were chosen.
    “You two are the long and short of it,” Wilton said one day after the bell rang and people were shuffling out of his cluttered
     room, trying not to knock things over. Later that day he posted a list for marching band and our names were on it. Even though
     Wilton is well known for his high-strung personality and depressing body malfunctions—platter-size armpit rings, foam collected
     at the corners of his mouth, dandruff—he’s right now our favorite teacher.
    The annual Zanesville parade is always in mid-October andalways has a Halloween theme. It’s a hectic, gargantuan affair, fifteen blocks of Elm Avenue devoted to it and people standing
     ten deep all along the way. This time, instead of watching from the sidelines, we’ll be marching in formation, behind the
     majorettes and in front of the football players and the floats.
    “I can’t play and walk at the same time,” I confess to Felicia.
    “Ha, me neither,” she says.
    Wilton’s wife is there in the John Deere Junior High School parking lot, helping people fasten their top coat buttons and
     referring to Wilton as Jim. She’s blond, friendly, and pregnant, wearing a big black wool tent and a pair of nurse’s shoes.
     When we walk up, she tries to give us each a plume, sorting through a flat decaying box to find two that aren’t bald.
    “No, thanks,” Felicia says, alarmed.
    “Jim?” the wife calls, pointing at us.
    Wilton shakes his head and she smiles warmly. “You’re fine just how you are,” she says.
    It feels very strange being in the dark with people from school when it isn’t schooltime. Wearing the uniforms has pried us
     all loose from our normal selves and we’re wandering around disoriented. Some people are randomly blowing into their instruments,
     creating an angular, cacophonous noise that is causing my heart to pound.
    “People, people, people,” Wilton calls tonelessly from the bumper of a pickup truck. “Please, people. People, please.”
    Off to the side, things are quieter. The float looks like a giant sheet cake on wheels. All those Kleenexes stuffed into all
     those holes. A skeleton is working on a special effect while awitch hands him tools. They have the overcheerful, pious look of involved parents, trying to make a cauldron belch smoke.
    A group of cheerleaders walks past, followed by a group of football players, one of whom is Danny Powell, who lives in my
     neighborhood and was my friend when we were five. He and I used to play a game under the