Now we were both halfway out of the bus, and Frankie was realizing that if we completed the fall, our heads would hit the roadway at a solid fifty miles an hour. He clutched frantically at my belt, pulling me farther out, tipping the seesaw the wrong way. They didn’t teach science at the Juilliard School of Music, but I knew by the laws of physics and simple measurements that it was impossible for my right leg to stretch far enough to hook my foot under the base of the seat in front of me, or for the metatarsal bones in my foot to counterbalance the total weight of two men hanging out of the back of an eight-door Dodge bus. Fortunately for us, Isaac Newton had never factored adrenaline into any of his equations.

Suddenly I was being hoisted back into the bus by the confident arms of two trombonists, Danny Hodges and Harry Weidel, second and third chair respectively. They were well suited to the task, pulling me as if gliding their slides from seventh position to first. I held steadily onto Frankie, who looked up at me like a dangling mountaineer who was fearful I’d cut his tether. With one good yank, I had him inside again. I bolted the hatch and observed that most of the band hadn’t even noticed our small drama, except for Tommy Trego, our band boy and the one responsible for checking the bus’s back door. His complexion was pale as milk glass as he averted his eyes from mine. I made a mental note that once we got to our hotel, I would have to tell him the story about how I once made the exact same mistake myself. I would have told Tommy the story then and there but I hadn’t invented it yet.

“Jesus, you nearly killed yourself, Ray,” said Frankie, brushing the road grit from his jacket. “I guess this makes you my hero.”

I wasn’t a hero, his or anyone’s. To be honest, I didn’t even care that much about Frankie. It’s just that nearly killing yourself for a fellow saxophonist is easy when you’ve been considering doing the same thing for no one in particular.

Prior to September of 1940, I’d more than once soberly entertained committing the equivalent of what we musicians call a dal segno al coda, this being the written instruction in music that the player should abandon repeating what has gone before and leap forward to the end.