"Well," I say, "it is all right, but where I come from it is done in a slightly different manner. I shall be happy to show you if you will kindly produce my horn."
I can hardly wait to lay my lip into a solid beat the more I listen to these ickies peeling it off the cob, and when one of the men finally brings in old Susie, I kiss her lovingly. She is in fine shape.
Old Ogroo stops the noise. He makes an announcement, and everything is quiet as I step up with my slush pump. It is like Goodman at Carnegie Hall.
Everybody crowds around as I give out with the Royal Garden Blues. I see I have them overcome and I begin to send softly as I hear one of the boys pick up the beat in the background. He is not so awful at that. After I have taken two choruses, one of the gut buckets has picked up the melody and I dub in the harmony for him. The crowd is beginning to sway slightly when I slide into Rose Room and pretty soon they are on the jump until it is worse than a bunch of the alligators at a Krupa concert. All in all it is a very successful performance indeed.
By the time I have finished, I see that I have first chair cinched, and the crowd is eating out of my hand.
This is by no means the last performance I give. I soon have the duck men in the band playing the best jive they can give out with, but it is rather sorry without any reeds and only one brass. They are entirely unable to play any wind instruments, though, so I am forced to make the best of it.
We play for three or four hours, and when old Ogroo and I finally leave the hall, I am cheered all down the line. I am really terrific.
"Mac," Ogroo tells me when we are outside, "you are wonderful. We appreciate music and in fact it is the biggest thing in our lives here. But you are lucky that we are the ones that found you on your arrival and not the animal men from the woods. They are very ignorant, and your trombone would have meant nothing to them."
Well, this is the first time I have heard about these animal men, and I figure maybe they are a little closer to civilization than Ogroo thinks. I ask him about them.
"They are our enemies," he says, "and are much stronger than we. They control all the land surrounding us, but on the water we have the best of them and they never try to attack us here. However we must venture into the forests sometimes, and then we are in constant danger. Many of us are killed or captured each year."