(This journal was called Senior Year until August 1998. Read on down and you'll see why it changed. Also I learned how to do tables in January out of a library book, so the gray is gone. You're welcome.)

Saturday, December 19, 1998

Home for Christmas since Wednesday. The House voted to impeach the President today and Grandma watched the whole thing in her chair with her Bible in her lap, not reading it, just holding it. At the end she said, "They ought to be ashamed, every one of them," and I said which ones, and she said, "Baby, I said every one of them."

My first semester grades came in the mail before I got home, so Grandma had already opened them (she says anything addressed to this house is her business) and put them on the refrigerator under the church calendar magnet:

English 101 - A
Marching Band - A
Biology - B
Freshman Orientation - Pass
College Algebra - C

A "C" in math and I'm an accounting major. Don't say it. Marlon already said it. Grandma didn't say it, but she moved the magnet a little so it covered the C, and I saw her do it.

Kiara is taller than she was in August. How does that happen in four months? A boy called the house twice this week asking for her. Grandma answered both times. He has not called a third time.

It's good to be home. My old bed is too short and the house smells like Grandma's pound cake, and I slept eleven hours the first night. No 5:30 whistle. No Cedric. Just the radiator ticking.

Monday, November 23, 1998

I marched.

Let me tell it right. Thursday at practice Byron, who is second rank, third from the end, came down wrong off a stadium step and sprained his ankle. Friday Cedric walked up to me in the band room, didn't even stop walking, said "Tolliver. You're in. Don't embarrass me," and kept going.

I didn't sleep Friday. I went through the drill in my head so many times I could see the yard lines on the ceiling.

Saturday, last game of the season. We lined up in the tunnel. It's dark in there and loud, and everybody is bouncing, and the drums start the cadence and you can feel it in your teeth. Then the drum major blows the whistle and you go. You come out into the light and the noise is so big it doesn't even sound like noise anymore, it sounds like weather. Horns up. Knees up. I didn't think about anything. I didn't miss a step. I didn't miss a note. I was just one more gold stripe in the rank, which is all I ever wanted to be.

After the fifth quarter, when we were putting up the horns, Doc walked by and said "Tolliver," and nodded once. That's all. I think I'll remember it when I'm sixty.

I called Grandma from the pay phone outside the band building with my calling card. First thing she said: "Did you crack it?" Same thing she's been asking since high school. I said "No ma'am." She said, "Good." Then she said, "Your mama would have stood up on that bleacher." Then she said this call is costing you money, hang up. So I did.

Sunday, October 25, 1998

Homecoming was yesterday. I have never seen so many people in one place in my life, not even at the Classic. Every alumnus who ever lived came back, in the colors, with their kids and their grandkids and their lawn chairs.

As an alternate I play in the stands, and at halftime I stand on the sideline with the other alternates and watch the band do the show I learned and didn't get to march. That's the deal. I knew the deal when I signed up.

Here's what I wasn't ready for. Walking around the tailgates before the game, everybody was asking everybody, "Who's your people? When did your daddy graduate?" And these kids would say, "My mama was class of '72," "my granddaddy played football here," and they'd get hugged by strangers. And somebody's auntie asked me who my people were, and I said, "My people are in Birmingham. I'm the first one." She looked at me a second and said, "Well, then you're somebody's people now," and gave me a plate of wings. I don't know her name. I think about it anyway.

Talked to Grandma and Kiara tonight from the hall phone. I buy a ten-dollar calling card and it lasts me about three weeks if I don't let Grandma get going about the choir. Kiara said tenth grade is "fine." Grandma asked if I'm eating. I'm eating. I said Doc feeds us, which isn't true, but it made her feel better.

Wednesday, September 9, 1998

Mark McGwire hit number 62 last night. My roommate Marlon is from Mobile and is a Braves man all the way, and he STILL stood up on his bed and yelled, and somebody down the hall banged on the wall, and then they came over to watch it again on the replay. Marlon's a biology major, not in the band. He says he likes having a roommate who is never home. I'm never home.

I'm typing this in the computer lab at the campus library, which stays open until midnight. I also work in the same library. I got work-study: twelve hours a week shelving books on the third floor, $5.15 an hour. My first check came Friday. I went straight to the post office in the student center and bought a money order for $40 and mailed it to Grandma with a note that said "for the light bill. Don't argue."

She argued. She called Sunday night and said I need that money for myself. I said Grandma, you fed me for eighteen years, let me pay the light bill. She got quiet and then said, "Nineteen years. You were born hungry."

Plan: forty dollars every other payday. I wrote it on an index card and taped it inside my closet door.

Classes: English 101, College Algebra, Biology, Freshman Orientation, and band, which counts for one credit and takes about forty hours a week.

Sunday, August 23, 1998

Band camp is over. I'm alive. Barely.

Two weeks. Up at 5:30, on the practice field by six, marching in the heat until the sun got mean, then sectionals inside, then back out after supper until the lights came on. I learned more about my own knees in two weeks than in nineteen years. We learned the high step, horn carriage, how to hold the horn up so long your arms shake and you keep it up anyway. We rookies had to learn the fight song and the alma mater by memory, and if you didn't know a word somebody would find out.

Our section leader is Cedric, a junior from Atlanta, and he is the loudest, meanest, best trumpet player I've ever stood next to. The first day he looked at me and said, "Tolliver. Your horn is sagging. Is your horn tired? Is your horn from Birmingham?" Every day after that, "Tolliver, your horn." I dreamed about it.

Last night they posted the list outside the band room. I read it three times. I'm in. I'm an alternate: I'm in the band, I get the uniform, I play in the stands at every game, but I only march the halftime show if somebody in my rank can't.

Walk-on. Alternate. I'll take it. I'll take it and I'll say thank you.

Sunday, August 9, 1998

Tomorrow Uncle Clarence drives me down to school for band camp. My whole life is in two duffel bags, a trunk from the Army surplus, and my trumpet case. I've never been gone more than one night.

If you're wondering why the page is named Walk-On now, here's why. In March the band sent me a letter that said I was a fine musician but they didn't have a scholarship for me this year, and I was "encouraged to attend summer band camp and compete for a position." In football that's called a walk-on: no scholarship, you just show up and try to make the team. When I told Grandma, she was standing at the sink. She didn't even turn around. She said, "Well, then walk on." So I am.

I worked at the store all summer, as many hours as they'd give me, and saved $640 for books and fees. The Pell Grant covers a lot, and there's a small loan, and there's work-study if I get it. It's going to be tight. It's always been tight. Tight is a place I know how to live.

This morning at church Pastor Pettway called all the college kids up front, six of us, and the church laid hands on us and prayed. Then the deacons handed each of us an envelope. Mine had $85 in it, in small bills, and some of those bills I know came out of old ladies' pocketbooks. I'm going to keep the envelope.

Kiara didn't say much all day. Tonight she knocked on my door and gave me a picture of her and Grandma on the front steps, in a frame from the dollar store, for my dorm wall. She said "Don't get all weird about it" and left. I'm not getting weird about it. I'm just writing it down.

Saturday, May 30, 1998

I graduated.

Downtown at the civic center, in a blue gown that was too short in the arms. Grandma wore her white church hat, the big one, and I'm told the people behind her had to lean. When they called my name Kiara screamed "THAT'S MY BROTHER" so loud the principal paused. Uncle Clarence whistled with two fingers. Grandma didn't make any noise. When I found her after, she held my face in both her hands for a long time and didn't say a word, and that was louder than all of it.

Then we went to Uncle Clarence's and ate until we couldn't move. Mr. Hollins came by with a card with twenty dollars in it and said, "Keep your horn up down there." Everybody's been telling me that my whole life. Keep your horn up.

Tuesday, March 24, 1998

Two letters today. One fat, one thin.

The fat one: I'm IN. Admitted. To the one I wanted. (I also got into the other two last month, but I didn't write about it because those were the "just in case" ones.) Grandma read the letter out loud twice in the kitchen, all the way down to the "Sincerely," and then called every church mother in Birmingham, in order of age.

The thin one was from the band. No scholarship this year. "Encouraged to attend summer band camp." I'll write more about that when I figure out how I feel about it.

Also I turned 19 on the 9th and forgot to put it on here. Grandma made a caramel cake. Kiara gave me a card that said "Happy Birthday Old Man" and inside she wrote "(just kidding) (kind of)."

My ACT went up to a 22 when I took it again in December, by the way. Ms. Bledsoe was right about writing every week, too. I'm keeping this going.

Saturday, February 21, 1998

Audition today. Mr. Hollins drove me down in his Buick, two hours, and made me do lip slurs in the passenger seat the whole way. "Buzz, Tolliver." I was buzzing on the interstate. A man in a truck looked over at me like I was crazy.

I played the first part of the Haydn trumpet concerto, the one I've been practicing since Christmas, and my scales, and then they put some sight-reading in front of me and I got lost in measure nine and came back in measure eleven. Nobody on the panel said anything. They just wrote. The band director, who everybody down there calls Doc, said, "Thank you, young man," and that was it.

On the way home I was quiet for about an hour and then Mr. Hollins said, "You came back in, didn't you?" I said yes sir. He said, "That's the whole thing. Most people don't come back in." Then he bought me a fish sandwich.

Also, Grandma's "we'll see" at Christmas was a yes. I played today on a brand-new Bach 3C. No dent.

Sunday, January 25, 1998

The Broncos won the Super Bowl, 31 to 24. Grandma was for John Elway because, she said, "that man has been trying so long." She doesn't know one thing about football. She clapped when he won like he was her nephew.

This week I did the financial aid form with Grandma at the kitchen table. It took three hours. It asked about "untaxed income" and "the value of investments," and Grandma laughed so hard she had to take her glasses off. Her income is Social Security. That's the form. That's the whole form. We still had to fill out every line.

Every time the news came on about the President and that intern, Grandma said "turn that mess off" and Kiara turned it up, just to see Grandma's face. Kiara is 14 going on 40.

Audition is four weeks from yesterday.

-- T.