B.u.g. Big Ugly Guy (9781101593523) (15 page)

“Tomorrow night,” Gully said. And a moment later, “I need a drum kit.”

After that the two boys tackled their algebra homework. Gully listened carefully but added nothing to the conversation.

Which
—Sammy thought—
is just as well since algebra terms wouldn't make a whole lot of sense without the algebra
.

That night, Sammy was too worried to fall asleep easily.

He'd convinced his mother to let Gully stay overnight. His first overnight friend since they'd moved.
And,
he thought
, the friend turns out to be a hulking presence in the guest bed, neither sleeping nor breathing. Just there. Just like in a monster movie.
Then giggling silently, he whispered to himself, “It's alive! Alive!”

When he finally fell asleep, Sammy's dreams were wild, filled with vivid images of James Lee, Gully, Julia Nathanson, Reb Chaim, his parents. Each successive dream was worse than the one before as he was hurt, humiliated, punched, punished, and preached at.

He awoke sweating and miserable. The sun was barely up and he could hear the morning paper—
Dad must be the last person on earth to
not
get his news from the Internet
—just hitting the front porch.

Sammy turned over in bed to look at the mound that was Gully.

He wasn't there!

“Oh, no!” Sammy gasped.

He stumbled downstairs, feeling far older than his not quite thirteen years. But Gully wasn't downstairs either, and the front door was wide open.

Racing around the house, Sammy looked in the living room, dining room, kitchen—every room but his parents'. Then, thinking maybe Gully had decided to return to his origins or to make a girl golem of his own, Sammy checked his dad's workshop as well.

No Gully.

Fearfully, he went out to the porch to collect the paper, expecting to see Gully sitting in the swing or on the porch stairs. After all, the door had been open.

No Gully.

Sammy brought the newspaper inside, spreading it out at the kitchen table. He began turning through the pages to see if there was any word of a large, shambling gray, nonbreathing figure roaming the streets of their little town.

No Gully.

Then, just to be sure, Sammy clicked on the tiny kitchen TV his mom had gotten before they moved to the new house. He found the early-morning breaking news, something he never watched. War, drought, economic collapse. The Czech Republic was even mentioned.

How strange is that!

Then the local news began. A stolen bicycle, a high school student caught tagging, someone's cat killed in a hit-and-run accident. And Mr. Grambling's music store broken into.

Suddenly
alert, Sammy listened carefully.
Someone had smashed in the front door and walked out with . . .

“Oh, no!”

. . .
a drum kit.

The newscaster went on to mention the smashed door again, saying how it seemed to have been destroyed by someone with superhuman strength. He liked that phrase so much, he turned to the woman newscaster next to him and said it again. “Superhuman strength.”

“Yes,” she agreed, “and the police could find no discernible fingerprints anywhere.”

“That's because I didn't give him any,” Sammy said to the TV. He put his head in his hands, thinking that nothing could get any worse.

Just then he heard the unmistakable sound of drums coming from the basement. Nothing just became worse!

“Why didn't I check there first?”

Sammy ran to the basement stairs, afraid of what he might see. Stepping down three steps, he bent over to peek. Gully was sitting behind a simple drum kit: two cymbals, two toms, bass, snare, and high hat, hammering away.

Smash!

Crash!

Actually,
Sammy thought, stunned,
he's not bad.
As he listened to the steady beat, all thought of where the kit had come from fled and his head bounced up and down to the rhythm.

Gully looked up, as if preternaturally he'd realized someone was watching.

Preternaturally's a
great
word,
Sammy thought.
Abnormal, miraculous, superhuman.
He suddenly remembered the anchorman saying “superhuman strength” and shuddered.

Spotting Sammy on the stairs. Gully did a quick snare-snare, crash and bass, as if accenting the joke.

“Not a big drum kit,” he said. “Room for four of us.”

Sammy thought:
It
is
the perfect size kit not just for the space, but for the kind of band we're going to be.
And then he thought:
And what kind of band is that?
Klezmer/Jazz/Pop/Rock Fusion!
With a mythical creature on a stolen drum kit, a wounded martial artist on guitar, a terrifically smart girl on the fiddle, and a Jewish punching bag on the clarinet. He began to laugh wryly to himself. Actually—it was
everything
he'd ever wanted.

And maybe . . .
he thought of Julia as he'd last seen her, dark hair bouncing as she walked away with her lunch tray . . .
maybe something more.

“Hey,” his father shouted from the kitchen. “What's that unholy racket?”

Unholy
. Sammy suddenly remembered Reb Chaim's warning.
Oh, Dad—if you only knew
.

But Gully hadn't hurt anyone who hadn't deserved it. And Sammy was quickly getting used to not being kicked around. To having some power.

People who listen to dire warnings—however well meaningly they are offered—
he decided,
NEVER get the power.

The old saying about “red skies in the morning, sailors take warning” popped into his head and he thought of a better last line to Skink's song:

 

Come on brothers, side by side,

In an army long and wide.

We won't wait for time nor tide,

Power!

17.

Practice Almost Makes Perfect

For the first time in what Sammy believed was ever, school was great. With Gully at his side, he didn't see James Lee or his Boyz all day. Julia Nathanson sat with him at lunch again. He wasn't
quite
as nervous this time, and actually managed to have a little conversation with her before the bell rang. And he didn't spill anything on himself in the process. In the lunch table conversation, they'd arranged for practice that evening. Which meant Julia was coming over to his house.

Tonight!

His stomach felt weird. He was surprised he kept the lunch down.

Sammy and Gully rushed home from the bus stop and headed right to the basement.

“C'mon, Gully, we've got to get the music area ready.”

Gully grunted in response.

Under Sammy's direction, Gully moved shelves, chairs, and the drum kit around for forty-five minutes, until everything was in almost the same exact spot it had started in.

“There,” Sammy said, “that looks good.”
Gully snorted but didn't say anything. Not even an echo: “That looks good!”

At dinner, Sammy's parents were very supportive of him having practice but . . .

“You have to finish your homework first,” his mother said. She didn't look at Gully who was staring at his plate without eating, having spent fifteen minutes simply pushing the noodles around from one side of the plate to the other. “And Gully probably has homework, too. You can do it downstairs in the band room.”

Band room!
Sammy grinned.

He gulped down his pasta and then took the stairs to the basement three at a time with Gully right behind. Homework was done quickly, though probably not well. Gully sat the whole while at the drum kit, making the motions but not the sound, his gray face full of concentration which made him look, Sammy thought, a bit like a sentient mushroom.

Afterward, they went upstairs to Sammy's bathroom, where Sammy washed up and changed into fresh clothes while Gully stared at himself in the mirror.

“I have homework, too?” Gully said to the mirror.

“Don't be silly,” Sammy told him. “I've already done it for you. Your real homework—and schoolwork—is me.”

They went back down to the band room. Gully riffed a bit on the drums while Sammy assembled his clarinet. Just as it was done, the doorbell rang. The sudden sound was as loud as an alarm.

It had all happened too fast for Sammy and once again his stomach lurched.

“Skinner John's here, Sammy,” his mother called. “And a girl, too.”

“Julia,” said Gully. “Julia is a girl.”

Sammy gulped, put down the clarinet, picked it up again. “Get a hold of yourself, Samson,” he said sharply.

“Yeah,” Gully echoed, “get a hold of yourself, Samson.”

Shaking his head, Sammy stood with little grace and a lot of knee-knocking, and went upstairs to get the door, the clarinet in his hand.

How did I ever think this was going to work?

Gully trailed right behind repeating, “Get a hold. Get a hold.”

At his last school, Sammy had done a butterfly project for science. It felt like every single one he'd ever studied had taken up residence in his belly.
There must be a million monarchs and red admirals and painted ladies in there.

Skink was standing in the hallway, holding his guitar case. Julia was next to him, her violin case sporting a shiny fish symbol on which the word
gefilte
was emblazoned. Skink still looked pretty beat up, but he was walking without a cane, albeit stiffly.

“Gully, help him,” Sammy said, and Gully carried Skink's guitar down the stairs.

At the same time, Sammy reached for Julia's fiddle. She just looked at him as if he were crazy and pushed past him to follow Gully down to the band room.

Oh God,
Sammy thought.
Why would I think she needed help carrying a fiddle that probably weighs, at most, two pounds?

Skink stopped in front of him, giggling. “You're like, a true gentleman, Samson.” Then he, too, went down into the basement, though slowly, holding tight to the railing and stopping on every other step, like a survivor from the
Titanic
.

Sammy remained at the top of the stairs as if someone had stapled his shoes to the floor, his hand absurdly out as if still waiting to grab Julia's violin case.
Well, this night couldn't have started much worse,
he thought.
But at least it's got nowhere to go but up.

Suddenly his feet could move again, and he stomped down into the basement.

But it
did
get worse. As soon as everyone finished tuning—no mean feat, with Gully continually pounding on the drums—they all went quiet and stared at Sammy.

He didn't notice. Still mortified by his performance upstairs, Sammy was staring at the top of his shoes. It wasn't until the silence stretched out into total discomfort that he looked up to see everyone looking to him for direction.

Why me?
he thought.
It's
my
first band, too!

He looked back down at his shoes intently as if there were instructions printed on them and waited for someone else to speak.

Skink plucked a single note, then adjusted his tuning a micrometer.

Julia tightened her bowstring.

Gully startled them all by hitting a cymbal with a terrible crashing sound.

Okay, Samson. Your basement, your band. Get this thing rolling or call it quits.

“Skink,” he said, his voice cracking. “Er . . . how about that song you wrote in the hospital. I've got a new last line for you.”

Skink nodded. “I worked the chords out,” he said, fingering a chord experimentally. “I think.”

Sammy smiled at him. “Let's call it a
grober
and see who gives it a
frassk
.”

“What in the world does
that
mean?” Skink asked.

“I have no idea,” Sammy admitted. “It was something my grandfather used to say.”

“My grandfather used to say, ‘Let's kill it and see who sits
shiva,
'” Julia said.

“Oh.” Skink chuckled. “My father says, ‘Let's run it up the flagpole and see who salutes.'”

Gully was silent for a moment, then said, “My father said, ‘
Shalom aleichem
.'”

The three stared at him, then Julia smiled. “
Aleichem shalom
.”

After that, Skink strummed the first chord of “
Power”
and began singing.

After the first verse, Sammy figured out the key and began playing a low bass line on the clarinet. Almost immediately, Julia came in with a high descant on the violin. Surprisingly, Gully played the drums with skill, if way too loud; at times they could barely hear Skink singing.

We'll need a PA system.
For the vocals,
Sammy thought.

But even with the drums too loud and the guitar too soft and Julia's harmony on the chorus all but inaudible, Sammy knew they had something. He'd been playing music for nearly his whole life, and he could tell.

I don't know what it is,
he thought
.
It's going to need a lot of work. And it might be a long time before we're ready to leave the basement and play a gig. But we definitely have Something.
Then he stopped thinking and just blew . . .

After a half hour on Skink's “Power” song, Sammy taught them all the Rabbi Chaim song:

 

Going down the road

In the Bar Mitzvah bus,

Boogie and klezmer

And fusion 'R' Us.

Making some music

And making a fuss.

 

And then Julia said, a bit shyly—
not her usual style at all
, Sammy thought—“I wrote something, too. I was going to wait a bit before playing it. And I only have a first verse. It's called “
Shiva
.” I wrote it when my grandfather Velvul died.”

“Velvul,” Gully said.

“It means Wolf,” Julia explained. “In the old country.”

“The old country,” Gully repeated. “Czech Republic.”

“Actually,” Julia said, “it was the Ukraine.”

Gully nodded. “The Ukraine.” But his face looked even more blank than usual.

Julia didn't respond to that, but instead began playing one of the sweetest tunes Sammy had ever heard, her eyes closed as if to keep tears from falling. She got through the first verse, stopped, opened her eyes, and said, “In case you don't know,
shiva
is the week of mourning for Jews. We light a
Yahrzeit
candle on the anniversary of the death. A Year Candle.” Then she began to sing again from the beginning, playing the fiddle at the same time:

 

It's been a year, Papa, your candle glows.

And where you've gone to no one knows.

The candle flame blows high and higher,

I see your dear face in the fire.

You are my first death. Now you're gone.

We do not forget, but life goes on.

 

Life goes on, I'm not sure why,

Just watch me Papa, from on high.

Life goes on, for me not you,

I'm singing now, full klezmer blue.

 

She almost yodeled the last note. It was klezmer crossed with the blues crossed with a kind of throaty sob that spiraled down even as her fiddle sang higher and higher until it almost hit a note that only dogs could hear.

Sammy was stunned.
I play music,
he thought.
So does Skink. But
Julia's a musician!
The strange thing was, he wasn't jealous, just awestruck.
Completely and totally and till the end of time, awestruck,
he told himself.

“Life,” Gully said solemnly. “Life goes on.”

Sammy gulped. For the very first time, he wondered what kind of life Gully really had?