All This Life

So far, today’s material has been a bunch of stinkers. The highlight has been an old lady fighting with a fast food wrapper, frustrated with how it constricts her breakfast sandwich. Jake’s even stooped to trailing some seagulls bouncing along the bridge’s railing, and he hates those nature shots, thinks they’re for old people, the Discovery Channel backwash his mom’s always watching, when she’s in town.

Jake likes capturing real human life, snatching seconds away from those who don’t suspect an audience. The other day, for example, he captured a guy’s catastrophic ponytail waving in a breeze, looking like a windsock; Jake immediately set it to music, Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” then uploaded it to YouTube.

309 views so far.

Not bad.

But today’s turning around for Jake.

Because right as he’s bemoaning all his benign options — the fast food wrapper, the boring gulls pooping and perching on the rail — that’s when he sees the band.

They’re just coming onto the bridge’s walkway on the San Francisco side, by the tollbooths; they’re moving toward Jake. Playing their instruments, forming a roaming pack. Jake counts twelve of them, three trumpet players, two saxophonists, two clarinets, two trombones, a snare drum, a bass drum, and a tuba player.

They’re all done up in wild outfits, clothed in mismatched prints and patterns and clashing colors.

Are they clowns? he wonders. No, their faces aren’t painted. They just have no fashion sense.

He hits record, holding his phone up toward them, zooming in. The brass band is too far away for Jake to make out their music, but they are all playing. Sort of dancing, shuffling along, moving their instruments back and forth in time with the song. They seem to be all ages, all ethnicities. White, black, and brown. He spots one bald man and two women with gray hair, the rest looking in their thirties or forties. Wait. He spies one girl who doesn’t look that much older than Jake. She’s tall and skinny, wearing purple striped pants with a paisley shirt, a butterfly collar. She’s playing the clarinet.

The most predominant noise comes from two men banging on the drums, one beating out a quick pattern on a snare, the other producing a slow rumble on a bass drum connected to his chest. It’s the size of a tractor tire, and his mallets hit either side of this musical wheel, deep thunderous booms that remind Jake of dinosaurs walking in the movies.

There are also certain loud notes exploding from the horns — the trumpets — little staccato bursts, punctuating something, but he can’t tell what they’re playing, what all the instruments’ contributions add up to yet, too far away to hear a melody.

Soon, though.

In anticipation, he says, “Turn down the radio, Dad,” kneeing the back of the driver’s seat.

The father, engrossed in a discussion of the 49ers pass defense, just grunts.

“There’s a band out there,” says Jake.

“Not now.”

“I need to hear them.”

“Later.”

At that, the boy loses interest in luring his father into this strange display on the bridge. Jake is a banner ad that the father won’t click. He’s a pop-up. He’s something equally as annoying: He’s a son in the backseat of his father’s car, talking.

Jake rolls down the back window, stretching his arm out, hoping he’ll be able to hear the brass band’s music and not the steady chug of traffic. But he can’t hear them yet, still about forty feet away. He frames the band as they bop and weave with their instruments, the sun glaring off of the horns, refracting little rainbows.

The band stays huddled together, forming an oval, like a lung turned on its side. They take synchronized steps, marching like soldiers, dressed like hipster gypsies. Jake can’t believe his luck finding this, filming this. An emoji of his face would convey an overjoyed anxiety, with the head gritting his teeth with a furrowed brow and flames burning in each eye socket.

Jake’s father lurches the car in small chunks every thirty seconds or so, the bridge even more gridlocked than normal. A couple hours ago, somebody ran out of gas, and the morning commute never recovered; he learned this from a traffic update during a commercial break from his sports talk. The empty car sat there for half an hour until Caltrans removed it, traffic trying to spread around the stalled vehicle like water around a rock. But it really screwed things up. His dad actually admires the stuck car, this idea of stopping, of quitting.

Jake fidgets in his seat.

His arm reaches as far as it can out the window, limb extending his iPhone, trying to get as close as he can.

The outline, the shadow, wisps of the brass band’s music finally reach him. It’s a fast song, something peppy and vivacious. The kind you might hear a marching band play. All major chords with a dance beat.