Byron’s Band

In eighth grade, I joined the miniature orchestra at my private Christian school: Jake played violin, John the baritone horn, James, Eric, and Wendy were our clarinet section, while Byron, Warren, and I played alto saxophones. Our band teacher, Mr. Gravestone, waved a thin white baton and wore a thick brown moustache. Smirking at us, Gravestone stroked his moustache like a kitten between songs. My father combed his own—that sumptuous third eyebrow—in the car as he dropped me off each morning. Getting out, I always bumped into Byron.

Byron, a scrawny second-generation Irish kid, was vigorously ignored by his first-generation mother and father. So he said. I never saw them. And he never changed the reed of his saxophone: it was soiled and scum-encrusted, contaminated with spit fungus, grime, and bacteria. Bryon pulled his sax from the case with that same disgusting thing fastened to the neck—right where his mouth went—day after day. It turned colors as it rotted. Byron, his invisible parents, and Mr. Gravestone didn’t notice. Warren and I pleaded with him.

“How can you put that thing in your mouth, Byron? It’s—”

“Green,” Warren said, reaching into a paper sack with the words Gary’s Music printed across the front. He pointed an unblemished bamboo sliver at Byron. “I haven’t even used it yet.” Byron declined. “Just take it.” Byron declined.

The annual Christmas recital—our first show—was fast approaching and we had a single song to offer: “Jingle Bells.” Easy enough, I thought. We rehearsed in the echoey chapel and the night of our show, the chapel was packed. We were all beginners, and as we squeaked and screeched and honked away at our new instruments from the elevated stage, I tried not to look at the audience seated below us in the pews but after the first few mangled notes, they burst into laughter, their reaction knocking us off balance, and we endeavored to finish the song, making many more mistakes, competing with our parents’ boisterous amusement for control of the room. My parents sat two rows back, tears streaming, hands covering their mouths, foreheads purple. Others lay against one another, howling, holding their stomachs. When we reached the song’s last note, our parents kept laughing, their convulsive howls reverberating. They suddenly stopped. After a moment came a smattering of applause. When it was over, my father hugged me by way of apologizing. Byron stood beside me. His parents stayed home that night.

Though we rehearsed daily, our band remained a great deal less than mediocre. Three months in, the clarinets sounded like grief-stricken ducks and the saxophones were a trio of haunted vacuum cleaners. Only Jake and John had any prior experience. Still, Jake might as well have rubbed his bow against a roll of paper towels. John’s farty offerings on the baritone were inaudible beneath the festering hurricane of spit-tarnished brass Byron, Warren, and I produced like reverse prodigies. As the year progressed, microbial organisms living on Byron’s reed evolved from algae green to pukey-burnt sienna.

One day, near the end of rehearsal, Mr. Gravestone asked us to lay down our instruments, leave the stage, and take seats in the pews. He had something important to discuss, but it wasn’t about how badly we’d been playing. Gravestone wanted to know if we understood the word honesty. We gazed at him, confused. What did this have to do with music? Honesty was more important than anything else he could teach us. “It’s more important than the music you play up there every day,” he said, pointing behind him at the empty stage.

A leather messenger bag lay at his feet. Gravestone said telling the truth was paramount to being a true believer. And he said that while he might not know whether we were being honest, God certainly did—and God punished those who lied. Then, he slid a folder from his bag. “The questions I’m going to ask are frank.” He shrugged as he listened to his own words bouncing from the chapel walls, echoes fading, replaced by a sharp intake of breath as his eyes widened, outgrowing his glasses. “But I want you to be honest.” He passed out eight sheets of paper, one to each of us. I watched our bandleader caressing his moustache. I examined the questionnaire, wondering why Mr. Gravestone needed to know these things—and what they had to do with music. He instructed us to leave off our names and write our birthdates on the questionnaires for confidentiality’s sake. “And I want every copy returned to me. Do not take them home with you.” He repeated himself, striking a chair with his baton.

Dad had always been more excited about me joining the school band than I was. He loved Wham’s hit single, “Careless Whisper,” even including the opening sax phrase on our answering machine. “Just playing some saxophone with my family,” he said. “Leave a message…at the beep.”

Near the school year’s end, my father opened a letter from the parents of another student. They’d included a xeroxed copy of our band teacher’s careless whisper of a survey. Someone disobeyed Mr. Gravestone and brought the questionnaire home. Eyeing the survey, my father read the first question aloud: “Have you ever touched the genitals of a person of the same sex?” Dropping the pages like they’d been tainted with anthrax, Dad christened Mr. Gravestone one sick motherfucker. Dad went straight to the principal who defended the man. “Mr. Gravestone’s one of our best teachers,” the principal said.

I owe becoming a musician to Mr. Gravestone—not because he taught me how to play the saxophone (he didn’t) but because his survey precipitated my escape to secular high school, where I met my best friend and started my first band. I always wondered if Byron still played or had his parents simply returned his rented sax to Gary’s Music, soiled reed glued to the mouthpiece.