I played my trumpet well.
That’s what everyone said, and I guess they were right. When I was 13, I began. My father didn’t think I would stay with it, but in my first year, I was second chair in the junior high band. I was second only to Michael, whose trumpet sounded to me then like the music that angels might have made, clear and clean and unfaltering, piercing the air like a razor, blessed with something nearly angelic. Perhaps it’s true that certain people are put on this earth to create beauty for others, and that’s the reason for their being. I believe that was why Michael was here.
When we played Wagner’s Tannhauser for the Easter ensemble, Michael’s trumpet rang with the bittersweet strains of the refrain. I was playing the second part, and as I played, as I heard Michael’s trumpet sound the last few lovely notes of Wagner’s music, my eyes welled at the loneliness and desolation that Michael had created, and from that moment on, I knew I would never play my trumpet like that, like he could.
His family lived across the lake from us, and on warm summer evenings he would raise Handel and Chopin, and sometimes Bix or Louis, again to glory as he played his trumpet over the still and moonlit lake, the soft and longing strains sounding to me like lines of a poem being sung for all to hear, soaring high into the evening sky, and then falling to silence.
I began to answer his night music with mine. Michael took care to stay artistically within my reach, and it was joyous. The evening lake was alive and rang with our riffs, from Michael’s funny little jazz conceits, to a sad and beautiful Largo of Bach’s. I was beginning to learn the depth of Michael’s love for his music and beginning to anticipate his moods just from his first few notes. I was able to respond in kind or sometimes even change them, and we’d fall into a beautiful rhythm, like lovers moving together, moving toward the same ecstatic moment… wonderfully sublime and intoxicating. And from these recitatives over that summer grew our kindred spirit in music along with an appreciation for each other as old and good friends. I’ve always been thankful for this.
I was so very young then. I had no idea that my mom and dad would not live forever, or that our neighbor’s son, and the son of Mr. Olson who owned the five and dime, and the son of my English teacher… I had no idea that their sons would one day fly away to a place called Vietnam, and never return.
On a bright and sun-filled Tuesday morning in April, the PA system sounded in the middle of government class. It was the kind of morning when you could smell the coming of spring, when you might see a Robin out on the school lawn, plucking at the ground for an unwary worm; the kind of morning when you were absolutely ecstatic to be living and doing anything at all, that kind of morning.
I heard my name. The PA system sounded again, and again I heard my name. “Karen Burke, report to the principal’s office… Karen Burke, report to the principal’s office.”
Mr. Acton asked me to sit down, and he smiled as I did, and then looked down at his desk. There was nothing there, not paper, not anything. He looked up at me slowly, and I could see tears beginning to settle in his eyes. “Karen, would you play your trumpet today at the cemetery? There will be a funeral this morning… a soldier.”
I didn’t realize. Cemeteries were just places with trees and immaculately kept grass that we pass on our way to visit folks, lovely places where birds came to life and sang.
As I walked the six blocks down Main Street through town to the cemetery, my trumpet case lopped softly against my leg and I felt the warm sun. I liked being out of school. I was surprised and happy to see that Michael was at the cemetery too. He waved to me, without expression, and said nothing.
Underneath a great oak tree, a green canopy had been erected over the perfectly rectangular dark and deep breach in the grassy earth. There were soldiers there and one, a man about my father’s age, a quiet, soft-spoken man, explained it all to me. Dressed in his blue and gold braided uniform with metals over his breast, his shoes and belt and sword gleaming in the sunlight, he explained that I would stand off across the open meadow several hundred yards away in a group of towering pines, and play as an echo to Michael’s trumpet. After the rifles fired, I would play slowly and echo Michael’s taps as perfectly as I could into the clear, blue morning air.
After the soldier spoke to me, he smiled and touched my shoulder as I moved away from him and began to walk toward the pines. Suddenly I felt afraid as I walked through the wet, cool, grass between the rows of engraved marble stones. The sparrows sang their songs off in the trees, and the sun felt warm and comforting on my back. The rich, blue immensity of sky hung over head, but suddenly I felt all alone.
I found a place under a tree so large I couldn’t reach around it. It was an old red pine with a soft bark that didn’t prick my back as I sat against it. The forest floor was covered with long, soft red pine needles and felt comfortable and accommodating. As I opened my case and began assembling my trumpet, the gold metal caught a glint of sunlight filtering down through the trees, and for a moment it glowed brightly into my eyes as I held it still, staring into it as if it were fire.
The long, shiny hearse was the first to arrive. After it, came a line of cars that extended as far back as the edge of town, and even beyond. They parked along the blacktop drive as people got out slowly and converged around the green canopy. Soldiers gathered around the rear of the hearse and through the open rear door, drew out the long, flag-draped casket.
They marched slowly, quietly, over the green and sunlit gleaming wet grass to the edge of the grave beneath the canopy. It seemed from where I was now standing, that there were a great many people gathered there, mostly dressed in dark or black clothing, silent, still, thoughtful, together.
Since I couldn’t see what was happening under the canopy, I waited and wondered in the silence how it would feel to be lowered into the damp, cold earth and not see the sun ever again, or hear the sparrows sing, or do anything at all. That was the very instant in which I fully realized the meaning of what it was to live and what it was to die. In those few moments, as that mom and dad were saying goodbye to their son, I could feel myself growing up and growing older, and suddenly answering for myself the questions in life that a child doesn’t know enough to ask.
I knew then what it must be like to lie in that shiny metal box with a flag for a blanket, the earth for a bed, and to sleep the long, endless night in eternity. But looking over at the gathering under the canopy, I knew he was the only one who knew for sure. Now he knew everything there was to know, yet his lips were cold and hard and still.
I was staring at the tragedy being acted out across the meadow under the oak, deeply into my thoughts when I heard the shouted commands…
“Ready…”
“Aim…”
“Fire!”
The sound of the rifles firing their farewell salute frightened me. They fired twice more, and then silence. Michael’s trumpet rose sweetly, sadly into the morning air, calling to me as I brought my trumpet to my lips. He played his soft, slow, mournful notes, and I responded, wanting it to be as sweet and as lasting and as gentle as possible.
It was our tribute to him, that mom and dad’s son, with the eyes of those who knew him all of his life looking down upon him for the last time. This was all that Michael and I could do for him now, but we were fine and gentle and lasting. When finally even the echoes of my trumpet died into the trees, I was at once proud, happy, and sad to have been a part of their son’s farewell, even though I had never known him.
Now though, as I stood there under those old, red pines, the noon sky blue, and the people slowly turning away from the grave and moving toward their cars, I knew him well enough, and I wept for his innocent spirit, no longer among those who had loved him.