I Sailed with Magellan Read Online Free PDF Page A

Sovereign was hit in the head—for an instant it appeared his skull had exploded, but it was just a tomato. He staggered and, looking stunned, directed us to turn down a side street. Mrs. Candido, blaring her horn nonstop, screamed, “Julio! Julio!” Julio broke ranks and ran for the car as a half-eaten pizza Frisbeed down, splatting the convertible top and windshield. It looked comical to see Mrs. Candido’s wipers working as she gunned away. I wished I was in the Buick with Julio—they wouldn’t hear a peep from me about the top being up—and when the car disappeared I felt abandoned.
    A band member’s trombone was now in the possession of a guy whose biceps were not tattooed but branded with gang insignia, and who was busy working the slide to produce brassy lipfarts. A kid about my age, smiling cheerfully beneath the brim of a White Sox hat nesting on an Afro, grabbed for my clarinet. I wrenched it away, filled with sudden panic over having to tell Uncle Lefty, if he ever returned from California, that I’d lost his horn. The band broke into a disorganized jog, and then we were running, abandoning horns and glockenspiels, the drummers trapped in their harnesses, every man for himself in full retreat. I cut from the pack, down another side street and another.
    The itchy cape flared behind me, tugging at my throat, perfect for someone to grab and pull me down. Voices shouted, but I didn’t turn to see who was chasing. My ill-fitting hat flew off, then my sheet music, and next the clip-on music stand, but I kept a grip on the clarinet. I was fast, the fastest kid in my school. I might be tenth clarinet, but I was first in every footrace, and the spats buttoned above my PF flyers seemed to make me faster still, as if I’d added winged heels. I thought I was fleeing in the direction of No-Man’s-Land but wasn’t sure. The streets were a blur and I had a stitch in my side, but I kept running. On an impulse I turned down a side street I hoped would lead back onto California.
My gym shoes splashed through water, not puddles but a current that swirled the rubbish out of the gutters. The street was flooded: every hydrant opened, boards jammed in their geysering mouths, fanning pressurized water into the prismatic mist of phantom rainbows. I was in a strange neighborhood that expressed its anarchy in water, a village on the shore of pouring hydrants. Its inhabitants wore wet clothes plastered to their bodies and cavorted through the torrents. A young Spanish girl in shorts stood beside the fountain of a red fire pump, her arms spread as if she were balancing on ripples. She was humming aloud to herself—a tune without a language, maybe her secret fire-pump song.
    â€œHey, Clarinet Boy,” she singsonged, and I stopped and stood, catching my breath. “Play something,” she said and gestured for me to come through a curtain of spray. And, as if I belonged there, I stepped to the shelter of where she waited beneath a cascading canopy of water.
    â€œWhat you want to hear?” I asked, as if I could play anything.

Live from Dreamsville
    Their voices floated across the musty mud smell of the gangway into our room. Mick and I sat at the edges of our beds and listened, laughing until we were afraid we might be heard, then burying our faces in our pillows to muffle the laughter. Next door, Jano was drunk and cursing. His gravelly voice slurred from some cavity deep within the dilapidated frame house.
    â€œHurry up the goddamn food,” he kept repeating, and every time he said it, Kashka would fire back, “Don’t get a hard-on.”
    â€œHurry up the goddamn food.”
    â€œDon’t get a hard-on!”
    We got a whiff of food frying in the smoky crackle of lard.
    â€œPhewee!” Mick whispered. “It smells like they’re cooking a rat.”
    We both dove for our pillows, choking with laughter. I buried my face until it got sweaty and I