Flash Fiction by Pamela Eason
Drawing:”Burgmusik” by Hans Schliessmann, in the Public Domain
Though their number was around four-hundred or four-fifty at most, for eleven years now, they had maneuvered unseen and unheard through jungles, forests, dusty canyons, craggy mountain ranges, and yes, even through over-crowded cities. Obstacles – trees, buildings, boulders, quick changes in elevation – messed with their formations at first. To overcome, they’d invented tricky steps, pivots, and flanks integrated with complex time changes.
Henceforth, they, for the most part, had been able to flawlessly execute each series of patterns they’d attempted. Even the thorny one that involved the shapeshifter in the Utah canyonlands went off without a hitch. Upon reflection one of them said, “It’s no wonder we could do it. After all, what are we, but a giant shapeshifter too?”
Nevertheless, though they rose to each challenge, they preferred monochromatic landscapes with a consistent elevation. On polar and subtropical deserts, on grasslands and greenspaces, and on beaches or frozen lakes, they could appear and disappear at will by the turn of a gloved hand, the unfolding of a scarf, the change of a hat, or the release of a ribbon. When they didn’t have to deal with elevation changes, they could easily morph, almost on autopilot, from one intricate formation to another in a comfortable two-four time in an area no bigger than a football practice field.
Most of them had been introduced to the required skills before puberty and they’d been sharpening them ever since. By their last year of college, each member had been at it for an average of twelve years. They’d learned the time and key signatures, notes and fingerings, how to count measures, and the commands, “forward march,” “right flank,” “mark time,” “roll step,” “about face,” and so forth. All along they’d learned how to contribute their part to the whole so that they sounded like many in one and looked, sometimes like a single amoeba and sometimes like a colony of ants, complexity in perfect singularity all moving in 2/4, 4/4, and 6/8 time.
When the the sister of Parnell, the piccolo player, was kidnapped, and the FBI had given up, refusing to follow a lead they’d labeled a hoax, Parnell said to the other graduating members, “We have a lead. We have the skills. If you’re with me, let’s get her back.”
“But won’t they see us coming?” Clara, the first-chair clarinet player, asked.
“We’ve been marching and playing in plain sight for years now, and, even when the drum are rolling, most no one has noticed us so far, so I doubt it,” Toby, the tuba player, muttered.
They all agreed, but, just for the sake of caution, they studied the landscape, for by now they had a good idea of her whereabouts. The best way to camouflage themselves and their instruments was decided, and with the help of Darla, the drum major, they came to an agreement on the series of maneuvers they’d use in the approach.
Their final formation was a double-lined circle around the old barn. With a single signal from Darla, who’d scaled the barn poles and reached the roof, the drumline beat out their impressive Boom Box cadence; it had been chosen because of the excessive cymbal action. By the time the band picked up with Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song, the trombone section had surrounded the kidnappers, who’d wandered out dazed and disoriented, and the flutes, who’d had an eight-measure rest, had secured the sister.
That was the beginning. Other unresolved cases and other graduates from across the country began to trickle in, and that is how the band grew to the four hundreds. Because of their unique, but often overlooked skills, many lives were saved and much evil was defeated, sometimes even during an SEC football game.
