Whale Music by Paul Quarrington

sat in a corner and made occasional mutterings, but he knew he was outdone. Fred Head and I had a like-mindedness that the father was powerless against. (Indeed, look at me now, a replica, a clone, of Freaky Fred. I am bloated, I am uninterested in everything but noise. Fred and I even have mental problems in common, although he has outdistanced me on this count: the State still has Freaky Fred locked in a soft white room.) The father was sputtering in his slumber when Fred and I finally finished. Then Freddy handed the father a small white box containing the tape recording. The father whipped out a pen and scribbled:
    THE FABULOUS HOWELL BROTHERS
PRODUCED BY HENRY HOWELL
    and he was at Maurice Mantle’s office the next day at nine o’clock. The father dragged Danny and me along with him, even though we were supposed to be at school. On instructions from the father, Danny and I were dressed identically, pin-striped button-down collared shirts and dark trousers. Dan did his best to undermine the effect, wearing his old boots, filling his hair with grease and then letting it tumble over most of his face. My hair has always been a snivelly cringing thing, meekly lying down on top of my skull without having to be told. The father threw the tape onto a machine in Mr. Mantle’s office and said, “I think you’re going to like this, Maurice. If you don’t, you’re maybe not as smart a guy as I thought you were, and I think you probably are.” Beside Maurice Mantle the father seemed the sort of guy that would sell a sheep’s baby sister to a drunken marine. “Now, I was trying something new here. This is a new sound, you see, a whole new concept.” What the father meant was that he himself didn’t care for it, was prepared to join Mr. Mantle in denouncing the music if that’s what Maurice wanted to do. “What we got here,” the father lied, “what we got on a stick, Maurice, what we got enough to maybe fill the Grand Canyon with, is
schnooze
.” The father punched a button, the tape started rolling.
    It sounded weird to me, the music trapped by the machine’s three-inch speaker. Danny was tapping his toe—mostly to draw attention to the mud on his boot—but then he started throwing up his shoulders and burying his head in his chest, a strangely rhythmic display of insecurity. “What’s that?” demanded Maurice Mantle. “Is that a dance?”
    “Yeah, yeah,” said the father. “That’s the dance goes with the music.”
    “That’s good,” decided Mr. Mantle. He placed elegant fingers to the knot in his tie, shoved it microscopically to the right. The father did likewise, that is, he grabbed ahold of the Jackson Pollock beavertail he had wrapped around his thick neck and made motions as though he were strangling himself.
    “Why don’t we listen through those big speakers?” I asked. “It would sound better through them.”
    “Probably,” agreed Maurice Mantle. “But most people don’t have big speakers, do they, Desmond? Especially kids. They have little rinky-dink pieces of shit and if music don’t sound good through them, the music just don’t sound good.”
    This was the first time an adult said the word
shit
in front of me. A coming of age.
    The tape finished, and the only sound in the room was the loose end hitting the controls of the machine as the flange turned. Mr. Mantle crossed over to the tape recorder, whacked at the STOP button. He wiggled his leg, effecting a better draping of the trouser. “What does Claire think of this?”
    My mother had listened closely the first time she’d heard it, bending over so that her ear was closer to the music. She seemed bewildered for a long time, confused by the harmonies. “Angels,” she whispered. “It sounds like little angels.” Then she’d listened again, and this time she wheeled out into the middle of the room, lifting her skirts, jerking her head so violently that I feared she’d give herself whiplash.
    “Claire likes it,” announced