Quentin and the Cave Boy by Susan Gabriel

Author:Susan Gabriel [Gabriel, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Humor
Publisher: Wild Lily Arts
Published: 2014-04-03T00:00:00+00:00

ELVIS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING

After the bell rings we make our way to my next class: band. The new girl’s name is Alicia and she’s in band, too. She plays French horn and if I look over the top of my music stand, past the flutes and clarinets, I can see her eyes. She doesn’t look up much from the music, probably because she doesn’t know anybody yet.

I play my dad’s old saxophone that he used to play when he was my age. A rubber band holds one of the key pads together and the tarnish looks like a bad case of metallic chicken pox, but it still works.

Right behind Alicia, Moss stands in the percussion section. The guys back there are close to being primitive themselves. They’re showing Moss how to beat the bass drum. Moss is good, and I wonder if he’s beat on drums before. Maybe that’s how cave teenagers sent messages before you could text.

For the longest time I watch Alicia. I fantasize about her looking across the band room and falling under the spell of my good looks. While we’re playing our warm-up scales, I pretend to be all serious, in order to win Alicia over with my passion for playing the saxophone. Then our band director, Mr. Davis, who looks like the human version of Homer Simpson, cuts off the band, except I don’t see him, so I keep playing after everybody else has stopped. My squawking saxophone cries out like the mating call of the biggest goose of all time.

Mr. Davis tilts his Homer Simpson head and says, huh? Then he looks at me and says, “Mr. Moss, may I ask what planet you’re on?”

The whole band explodes in laughter, because Mr. Davis has a funny way of humiliating a person. Meanwhile, I fall back to planet earth in crashing speed, still trying to determine the exact color of Alicia’s eyes.

I slump in my seat and don’t have the courage to look in Alicia’s direction because my face is flushing so hot I figure the tips of my ears must be turning red, too. In my imagination I hear Heather Parker’s mocking voice: Forget the gums, look at his ears! At that moment I want to crawl under the biggest rock in Atlanta and hang out with the worms. Just when I thought nothing could be more humiliating than Heather Parker’s rejection or the rope-climbing incident, this is even worse!

In the next second Moss starts playing a solo on the drums. Everybody turns to watch. The guys step back as he takes over the entire drum section. Moss beats the timpani drums, then the bongos, and then plays the snare drums, creating this amazing jungle rhythm that has everybody tapping their feet. At first Mr. Davis tries to stop him, but then he starts clapping along.

Moss has everybody captivated by his primitive beat. Everybody is beating on their music stands with their hands and stomping their feet. It’s like we’re all remembering our jungle roots, a time when life had a rhythm to it and wasn’t so complicated.

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