In God we trust_ all others pay cash - Jean Shepherd [74]
Our 180-beat-to-the-minute cadence snapped and cracked and rolled on like the steady beating of an incessant surf. Sharp in itchy uniforms and high-peaked caps, we learned the bitter facts of life while working our spit valves and bringing pageantry and pomp into the world of the Blast Furnace and the Open Hearth, under the leaden wintry skies of the Indiana prairie land.
The central figure of the scene was our Drum Major. Ours was a Spartan organization. We had no Majorettes, Pom-Pom girls, or other such decadent signposts on the roadway of a declining civilization. In fact, it was an all-Male band that had no room for such grotesqueries as thin, flat-chested, broad-bottomed female trombone players and billowy-bosomed clarinetists. A compact sixty-six man company of flat-stomached, hard-jawed Nehi drinkers, led by a solitary, heroic, high-kneed, arrogant baton twirler.
Drum majors are a peculiarly American institution, and Wilbur Duckworth was cast in the classic mold. Imperious, egotistical beyond belief, he was hated and feared by all of us down to the last lowly cymbal banger. Most drum majors of my acquaintance are not All-American boys in the Jack Armstrong tradition. In fact, they lean more in the general direction of Captain Queeg, somehow tainted by the vanity of a Broadway musical dancer, plus the additional factor of High School Hero.
In spite of legend, many drum majors are notably unsuccessful with women. Wilbur was no exception, and his lonely frustration in this most essential of human pursuits had led him to incredible heights in Baton Twirling. He concentrated and practiced hour upon hour until he became a Ted Williams among the wearers of the Shako. His arched back, swinging shoulders, lightning-like chrome wands; the sharp, imperious bite of his whistled commands were legendary wherever bandsmen rested to swap tales over a Nehi orange. At a full, rolling, 180-beat-per-minute tempo, Duckworth’s knees snapped as high as most men’s shoulders. He would spin, marching backward, baton held at ready port, eyes gleaming beadily straight ahead in our direction. Two short blasts of his silver whistle, then a longer one, a quick snap up-and-down movement of the wand, and we would crash into “The Thunderer,” which opened with a spectacular trombone, trumpet, and sousaphone flourish of vast medieval grandeur. Precisely as the last notes of the flourish ended and “The Thunderer” boomed out, Wilbur spun like a machine and began his act. Over the shoulder like a stiffened silver snake with a life of its own, under both legs, that live metal whip never lost a beat or faltered ever so slightly. Catching the sun, it spun a blur high into the Indiana skies and down again, Wilbur never deigning so much as to watch its flight. He knew where it was; it knew where he was. They were one, a spinning silver bird. Even as we roared into the coda, attacking the sixteenth notes crisply, with bite, we were always conscious of the steady swish of that baton, cutting the air like a blade, a hissing obbligato to John Philip Sousa.
Like all champion Drum Majors—and Wilbur had more medals at seventeen than General Patton garnered over a lifetime of combat—Wilbur’s act was carefully programmed. Almost in the same way that an Olympic skater performs the classical School figures, Wilbur had mastered years before the basic baton maneuvers, the classical flips and spins, and performed them with razor-sharp, glittering precision. He would begin with a quick over-the-back roll, a comparatively simple basic move, and then, moment by moment, his work would grow increasingly complex as variation upon variation of spinning steel wove itself through the Winter air. And then finally, just as his audience, nervously awaiting disaster, to a man believed there was nothing more that could be done with a baton, Wilbur, pausing slightly to fake them out, making them believe his repertoire was over, would give them the Capper.
Every great baton twirler has one thing that he alone can