Now Back To Where We Left Off…
After Mr. Lewis died, we were without a music teacher in the school, so the district made arrangements to have a substitute teacher for the rest of the year. Mrs. Brown filled in until the end of the school year, and the year went by quite uneventfully.
THE REAPER Comes Home
Since no one knew any different, I took THE REAPER home with me during the summer. I spent nearly 8 hours every day practicing.
My parents started to get a bit worried about my obsession. Over dinner one night my dad asked, “When are you going to get out of the house?” I didn’t have an answer for that, because I really didn’t want to go anywhere.
You see, I had become obsessed with the bass. If I wasn’t playing it, I was cleaning it, looking at it or thinking about it.
I’d spend hours just staring at it, and imagining what this 60-year-old horn had experienced. I started to imagine all kinds of things. Concerts that it had played in; players who might have held it; types of music it would have been used in.
These daydreams of mine soon turned into dreams. I dreamt that I was the saxophonist playing THE REAPER in the 1920s dance bands. I was the anchor holding these dance bands together. I saw photographs of myself with the bass, hanging in the hallways of hotels, and in night clubs. In these dreams my bass and I, it seems, were part of a popular dance orchestra.
There was a dark side to these dreams as well. In one dream, a trumpet player, who had no use for the saxophone section in general, suddenly found himself in the line of a stray bullet while we played in a less-than-desirable part of Chicago.
A drummer, who mocked my choice of female companions during our stay in Boston, didn’t show up one night for our gig. About 2 months after our dances there, Bob’s body was found floating in the harbour. Although our new drummer, Joseph, wasn’t as smart as Bob was, he knew better than to laugh at anyone’s choice of female companions.
The worst fate of all was reserved for the upright bass player in our band. He had been discussing with the conductor, the overlapping of bass parts between his instrument and the bass sax. He felt that the bass sax was not necessary, and that it should be done away with.
Shortly after that conversation in New York, the bass player, John, claimed to have been pushed down the stairs at a dance hall. The strange thing was there was no one around him when it happened. He clearly remembered the feel of hands on his back just before taking a header down the steps. John broke his neck during the fall and lived in an iron lung for the rest of his days.
I don’t know exactly where the summer of 1984 went. It seemed to vanish into a haze of practicing bass sax, cleaning the horn, day dreaming, and dreaming about what life was like as the player of THE REAPER during the 1920s.
The New Band Teacher
When school started again in the fall, we had a new band teacher. This teacher was unaware that the school owned the bass, so I didn’t tell him any different.
Mr. Johnston was rather amused at the prospect of having a bass saxophone in his bands. He did try to convince me to switch to something like the baritone. But when he saw he wasn’t going to win the fight, he gave in, and let me continue playing THE REAPER.
You see, Mr. Johnston was also a saxophone player, and he really liked the idea of trying to play the bass himself. But try as he might, good old Mr. Johnston couldn’t get THE REAPER to do anything for him. He told me, “This horn is leaking terribly.” I disagreed, and said, “Well, I seem to have no troubles with it.”
He was also bothered by the graffiti etching on it, and felt that the obscenities had no place in a school. He suggested that perhaps I should get the horn replated.
I really didn’t know what to do, since the horn wasn’t even mine. Technically it belonged to the school. I was worried if Mr. Johnston discovered this he would take it away from me.
Well, I didn’t need to worry. One night while I was playing THE REAPER, I suddenly experienced a wave of nausea. Coloured light once again came out of the end of the bell, but this time the wave of light travelled out the window and into the night.
The next day we had a school assembly. It seems Mr. Johnston had been in a car accident and died the night before. His car hit a power pole head-on at 100 mph. Apparently his saxophone case flew out of the back seat and decapitated him.
I was suddenly really scared. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t talk to anyone. No one would believe me, and if they did, they’d be in THE REAPER’s sights. I decided that I would leave the bass at school and not play it any more.
That night when I sat down at dinner with my parents, my dad asked me, “Where’s THE REAPER?” I replied with, “I decided that I want to play tenor again so I’m leaving the bass alone for awhile. With no band teacher again, the music program is not going anywhere anyway, so now’s as good a time as any. I was going to ask you and mom if you’d spring for a private teacher.”
After dinner I went to my room, and there was THE REAPER’s case sitting in the middle of the floor. How did it get there? I didn’t bring it home.
The next day I took it back to school, and locked it in a band practice room. When I got home from school, there it was again. I realized then and there, this horn was not letting go of me.
I thought I could give the instrument back, and it would be over. I went to the school and told them that I had their instrument, and wanted to give it back.
The administrators looked up school records, but found no record of a bass saxophone ever being in their inventory. This was my horn they said, and no, they didn’t want it. A bass saxophone in need of repairs and covered in obscenities, was not the kind of donation they were looking for.
I decided that I’d be creative about this, and tried trading the bass in on a new horn. The music store owners I took it to just laughed at me. None of them had any interest in a horn like this. GET OUT. That was the general message I got everywhere I went. No one wanted a vintage bass, especially one covered in obscenities and in need of an overhaul.
THE REAPER Stays Home
I graduated high school, but dropped out of band. I kept THE REAPER, and now play it in the privacy of my home.
The dreams haven’t stopped, but they’ve changed. I no longer have flashes of what it was like to play THE REAPER in the 1920s, rather I see myself and THE REAPER going out to play in parades. Coloured flashes of light still get emitted from the bell of the horn, but it’s only in my dreams. Or so I keep telling myself.
There are days where I seem to be loosing time. I don’t remember big chunks of the day, and I can’t recall how I ended up with THE REAPER in my car, in another city, or another state.
My choice of clothing has changed as well. I wear a lot of black now, and I accessorize with things that I would never have in the past.
The annual Halloween parade in New York has never really interested me, but I’ve woken up in a hotel room in New York City on November 1, for 5 years in a row now. I have no idea how I got there or what happened the day before.
I’m always shocked when I read the paper on November 1, to discover how many people who attended the parade on October 31, met a strange end. If the paper runs a photo of the victim, more often than not, the person reminds me of someone in my dreams, who was enveloped by the coloured light coming from THE REAPER.
I don’t know how long I can continue to live in this state of denial. I am writing this because today is Halloween, and I fear that tomorrow I will find myself waking up again in a hotel room, reading of strange deaths.
So if you see me today, or any other day of the year, stay far away. Don’t look at me, don’t look at my bass. Just turn, and walk away. Quickly!
And for your own sake, if you ever come across a bass saxophone etched with the words THE REAPER, leave well enough alone.
Definitely Not Your Friend,
