Free Slide Trombone by David Nickle Page A

talk about, Dave?”
    “It’s a mystery.”
    “Quit fucking around. We don’t have a lot of time here.”
    Dave hadn’t been fucking around. Mystery is what it was. “Talked about a lot of things. Can’t say exactly.” Wasn’t good enough, and Dave knew it. He frowned and thought a moment. “Asked him if he was still using the valve trombone, or’d gone slide.” Which we all knew was a strange thing to ask, given Dave had met him the same time we did and had no idea what type horn he used to play. “Slide, he said. Same as always. He asked me . . .” Bong went to Dave. “Mmm. Asked me if I wanted it.”
    “The trombone?”
    “No. Something else. Didn’t say what. But something else.”
    Bong went to Vincent, then Steve. Thunder came and went. Dave got up, came back with beer. Took the bong. We thought about that question: Did Dave want it? From that: Did we want it? Was it worth having? Rain started up.
    “So who is he?” Vincent. “We never had a trombone back in the day. I remember
that
much.”
    “Our music doesn’t lend itself to trombone.”
    “You wouldn’t think.”
    “And yet.”
    We grew thoughtful. On the one hand, we remembered how it was: band class and bands didn’t mix. Dave had made that clear from Day One, as we hunched in the dull October light, greying our grey cafeteria lunches further. Dave wouldn’t even tolerate a lead singer — and if one of us pointed out Robert Plant by way of argument, well we could just fuck off. Steve and his axe, Steve and the microphone. Same thing. And for band class?
    “Point of this is not formal training. Point is, you got to feel the music — that’s how Jimmy does it. That’s how we do it.” Plenty of trombonists in band class. And who needed them?
    On the other hand . . .
    “I helped him load his trombone into the trailer.” Dave, perplexed. “I know.”
    “What do you want?”
    “What?”
    “Far as what the trombonist asked if you wanted it. What, exactly?”
    Vincent.
    Always got the Friday fish and chips. Wispy moustache over baby-smooth chin. That and the belly fat and the greasy black hair not quite straight inoculated him against the attention of the big-haired girls — Sue, Maryann, Sue’s friend . . . who? . . . the big-haired girls who followed us set to set, tried to keep up, talk about the way the music moved, finally reduced to regurgitating tag-lines from Creem critiques and just nodding, kneeling on the floor while Dave told them how truly full of shit they were, showed them what he meant on air guitar.
    “I don’t know what I want.”
    Dave, who’d stopped being such an asshole long back.
    Steve cracked a beer. “Sure you do. You want the music. Always have.”
    Dave thought he should tell the rest of us how full of shit
we
were on that count. But we looked at him that way we did. He nodded.
    Rain like applause on the roof. Water splashed in the washroom. We all sat quiet, not wanting to upset the fish any more than it was. Figuring the storm would send
him
back inside soon anyhow, rainwater dribbling a line from spit valve back to the kitchen chair he’d occupied all day, before the door chimed.
    “Speaking of the fish.”
    “Trout.”
    “Trout. You’re sure he thinks we’re too loud?”
    “Asked us to keep it down.”
    “Asked
you
to keep it down. Not like
we
heard anything.”
    “You saying I made it up, Vince?”
    “Not saying that at all. But I got to wonder: that fish tell you to keep it down the same way you knew to stop at the mall before we left town?”
    “You see what he’s saying?”
    “What we’re getting at?”
    What we were getting at was this: perhaps Steve had heard directions from Vincent’s house to the south entrance of the mall as a faint whisper in his ear, in a language that he had not heard since the womb, or even prior that.
    “I see.” Steve stepped into the washroom. Shut the door. Set his beer down on the sink. Looked down at the trout, which hung near the drain, still