Trumpet

There's this guy I know. At least, he comes in to the deli where I
work behind the counter every day. Our deli is always very busy. It's
right near about four different banks and all the clerks and other
workers come in for their breakfast and lunch pretty much by clockwork.
This guy doesn't work in any of the banks though, that's why I can tell
him apart. All the bank clerks look the same, defeated. He does too, in
his own way, but different to the clerks.

He doesn't work at all anymore, not for about two months at least. He's
started coming in more often since he lost his job. He was a
road-sweeper and he lost his job. He always looked pretty
scruffy-looking, but now he basically looks like a tramp. He is a
tramp, I suppose. He used to come in every day and have a ham salad on
granary. Except now he doesn't have the money for a ham salad on
granary so he just comes in and asks and I turn him away, every day. I
haven't told my boss about it because I know he'd call the police or
manhandle him out of the place or something and I don't want that to
happen. He's a big guy, my boss, and I've seen him dish out some of the
rough-stuff to unruly customers before. I don't want that to happen to
this guy. It seems like too much has happened to him already.

He's always had a stoop, at least, he has for as long as I've known
him, which is maybe five months. He probably got it because of his job
and it means you can't tell how tall he is. Since he's grown a beard
he's started looking older too. I would've guessed between
thirty-five-forty before, but now he looks anywhere up to about sixty.
It's a shame, it really is. And while he used to come in to the deli
wearing this fluorescent yellow road-sweeper jacket, now he comes in
wearing a long, dirty brown coat that looks like he picked it up from a
skip somewhere. He's starting to smell and some of the customers
physically turn away when he walks in, which is always about eleven
thirty - just when it's getting busy for lunch. I should probably tell
my boss but I don't have the heart. I don't want to make the poor
bastard's life any harder.

Anyway, recently he's taken to carrying this dirty plastic bag around
with him, the type you get at a supermarket, except it's so old and
crumpled you can't even make out the name of the store anymore. But
it's what he carries in the bag that's strange. He carries with him,
every day into the shop, in this crumpled up, skuzzy-looking plastic
bag, an old, dilapidated trumpet. You can tell it's a trumpet as the
top half, complete with this even older looking metal muffler stuck
into it, sticks out the top, while the mouthpiece sticks out through a
hole in the bottom of the bag.

And that's the weirdest thing, the bit that should have a mouthpiece
doesn't have a mouthpiece anymore, which renders the whole thing pretty
useless if you ask me. God knows why he's taken to carrying that old
thing about. The trumpet's in pretty bad shape, just like him and, like
his coat, it's covered in this dirty brown colour like rotting
branches. It probably used to be shiny and metallic and make a great
tune when you played it right. Now it just looks like a couple of
twisted, rotting branches stuck together any which way and it makes me
sad as hell when I see him carrying this pathetic-looking, once
playable instrument around with him in a dirty plastic bag. I don't say
anything though, it's not my place.

"Ham salad on granary," he says to me today, the way he always
does.

"Have you got any money Jack?" I say. I have no idea if his name's Jack
or not, but it's what I call him all the same.

"What do you think?" he says.

"Then no," I say.

Usually at this point he turns and shuffles out the door and I get on
with the business of the day. Pasties, pastries, hot and cold
sandwiches, coffees, teas, some to take out, some to eat in, it's all
the same to me. But today he stays right where he is and he pulls out
this trumpet and holds it up for me to see. He has to make this big,
convoluted effort to pull the trumpet out as it gets caught up with the
plastic bag. I can smell the stale beer on his breath even from behind
my counter.

"See what I got?" he says.

"It's a trumpet," I say. I don't want to get dragged into a
conversation with the crazy bastard, but he isn't going to leave until
he's said what he wants to say, I can tell that straight away.

"Goddam right it's a trumpet," he says. "Finest goddam trumpet the
world ever saw. I used to play this trumpet every goddam night. Used to
play jazz, finest jazz you ever heard too. Had 'em queuing up around
the block to hear me play."

"That's nice," I say. I don't know what the hell else to say.

"Queuing round the block, and look at me now, can't even get a
sandwich."

"How did you play it? There's no mouthpiece," I say, trying to wrap our
little conversation up. It turns out to be the exact worse thing I
could've said though.

"You trying to be funny boy?" he spits at me, literally. It's not very
hygienic but I have to wipe my face with my hand.

"Listen, if you're not going to buy anything - "

"It used to have a mouthpiece - you can't play a goddam trumpet without
a mouthpiece you goddam clown! Just 'cos it don't have no mouthpiece
now doesn't mean it didn't use to."

"Okay, okay," I say, trying to calm him down. There's a queue building
up behind him and some people are starting to look annoyed by the scene
this guy is making.

"It used to make the best goddam noise you ever heard. Ever heard Duke
Ellington? He'd have given his goddam eye to play this beauty. And
though it won't play no more, I keep it by my side all the same. Don't
you forget it neither," he says.

"I won't," I say.

"Just 'cos something don't play no more doesn't mean it didn't make the
best goddam noise you ever heard," he says.

"And just 'cos it don't play no more and I ain't got no one to play to
no more don't mean I can't play if I don't want to. Don't make a goddam
difference, whether there's someone at home, if you've even got a home,
as long as you can remember what the hell you're about. 'Cos that never
changes."

I'm wondering what the hell he's talking about and the customers
waiting are starting to get more vocal and boisterous about the time
they're having to wait while Jack shouts his mouth off. I'm trying to
think of a way to get him out of the shop when it's taken out of my
hands. I hadn't seen my boss, I suppose he must have come from the back
room behind me, but he pushes past me in this big rush, gets the other
side of the counter and picks Jack up, just like that, and starts
walking him out backwards. He's a hell of a big guy, my boss, and he
gets Jack out the door fast as lightning. I can see him through the big
front windows shouting at Jack, probably about never coming back into
his deli, and stamping on his trumpet, but I can't hear exactly what
he's saying through all the cufuffle that's started up in the queue. My
boss comes back in through the front door and makes his way to the
counter, pointing one of his thick fingers at me.

"Nick, that son of a bitch ever comes in here again you'd better tell
me right away or I'll kick you out of here quicker than you can blink,"
is all he says before pushing past me and into the back room.

I look past the queue of people waiting, through the front windows to
Jack. He's picking that crazy trumpet off the floor where my boss threw
it before stamping all over it. Out in the street it suddenly looks
like a twisted, beaten bronze rose and I watch the way old Jack
carefully dusts it down before putting it back in that plastic bag of
his. It's even more bent now than it ever was, and even more
useless.

It's funny though, 'cos even without the mouthpiece I can still sort of
see how it would have worked. Pick up the stem and put the end to your
lips, blow through the intricate pattern of pipes, push down the
stoppers and let the music flow through the muffler so it would come
out all nice and soft. Since the stamping it's even more banged up;
rotting like dead branches, slowly, like Jack. For one, slow second I
wonder if he ever really did play it, and I can even see him standing
there on a stage, the spotlight raining down on him and his shiny
trumpet, playing jazz to make Duke Ellington jealous. But I know the
truth is he probably just picked it up from some skip, along with his
coat, and I serve some woman a Caesar salad and coffee to go.