Jack Hunter Stories (Previously Published)

           

To Memory (published by Edge Piece Magazine, 2011)

I was sorting through the ancient things in the attic the other day and I came upon two boxes from my undergraduate college years.  Leafing through an old textbook of Jowett’s translation of Plato, I found this snapshot from March of 1986.

            It’s a picture of me, when I was twenty-one, with three friends: Melinda Carter, Brian Durham, and Barbara Lauren standing, in that order, arms on each other’s shoulders, on the stern of the Staten Island Ferry. The whole day came back to me suddenly, completely.

            We were all together then at Elting College, a small school two hours north of New York City. I was working part-time as a tutor in the Learning Center, helping students with philosophy, my major.

            I met Melinda Carter when she signed up for help with Intro to Philosophy, a class devoted entirely to Plato, who happened to be my specialty. She looked like a country western star; medium height, blonde with brown eyes, and a body, as Shakespeare would put it, which sounded a parley to provocation.

            One Friday, after we’d finished up, she asked, “Hey, Jack. You doing anything tomorrow?”

            “Yeah,” I said. “I’m going to the city with two friends.” I smiled at her, collecting my books and papers. “Why’d you ask?”

            “No reason,” she shrugged, looking down at the table. “Just wondered.”

            “No,” I said, smiling. “Why? You think you need more work?”

            “I – well – I just wondered if you’d maybe want to go on a, like, picnic with me. You know. Up to Split Rock or something like that?”

            I sat back in my chair, my smile frozen on my face. Split Rock was a small cleft up in the mountains above Elting, complete with waterfalls, where people went to hang out naked in the cool streams and contemplate life – or each other.  No one went there, or proposed going there, who didn’t know what it was all about; and what it was all about was skinny dipping.

             I looked across that table in the Learning Center and thought of that slim, beautiful body slickly wet, stepping up out of that mountain stream.

            “I’d love to,” I said (and, oh, how I meant that). “But we’ve had this trip set up for a while now. I think they’d be pretty disappointed if I copped out last minute. You know?”

            “Sure,” she said, nodding. “No problem. I understand.”

            She played briefly with a strand of hair, not looking at me, and then began to quickly gather her books toward her.

            “Hey,” I said, leaning forward and laying my hand on hers. “Why don’t you come with us? We’d all love to have you along. It’ll be a lot of fun.”

            “No, that’s okay. I really should read Book Four again.”

            “No, you shouldn’t. You’ve got that down cold. Once you’ve grasped Republic’s central idea you’ve got it all. Come with us.”

            “I don’t think you should really speak for your friends. Shouldn’t you ask them first?”

            “But you know them. It’s Brian and Barbara. You met them down at Cafe di Lago that night, remember? We were working on Book Two?”

            “Oh yeah,” she said, and her face noticeably brightened. “Yeah. They were really cool. You sure they wouldn’t mind?”

            “They’d love it. I swear.”

            “All right, then,” she said. “I’m there.”

            “Great. We’re leaving at eight. Parking lot right outside Crispin Hall. We’re taking the train down. See some sights. Barbara wants to pick up art supplies in the Village and Brian wants to take the Staten Island Ferry but not see the Statue of Liberty.”

            “Why not see the Statue of Liberty?”

            “I can’t quite answer that,” I said. “That’s one of those questions you’d have to delve into his childhood for. And I’m not strong enough for that.”

            She laughed. “All right then.”

            When I told Brian about it later, back in our room, he said, “Jack, man, you gotta be out of your mind. Split Rock? With Melinda Carter? That chick wants you, man. I knew it that night in Di Lago. She was looking at you the way I was looking at her.”

            “But we’ve had this planned a long time, Brian.”

            “Hey, man. I respect your loyalty, I really do. One of your more redeeming features. But if it’s a choice between getting laid or disappointing friends, pal, always go with door number one.”

            Barbara, on the other hand, thought I was great.

            “Oh, that’s so sweet!” she said. “You’d do that for us.”

            I nodded and smiled. I’d stopped by her room to tell her Melinda was coming. Barbara had almost canceled on the trip herself to see a concert across the river with her new boyfriend, Frank Sheffield; but she’d opted to stick with us.

            “I’d feel kind of strange going just with Brian,” she said, looking away from me. “It’d feel too much like a date. Not that that’s bad or anything,” she quickly said. “It’s just -“

            “I know. I understand. That’s kind of what I figured.”

            She leaned forward and kissed my cheek. “You are so sweet.”

            Walking back down the hall to my room I thought how really un-sweet I was. My real reason for turning Melinda down on nudity and asking her to the city was that I didn’t want Brian and Barbara sharing something I’d be left out of. We always did everything together.

            So, at eight the next morning we all got into my Chevy and I drove across the river to the train station in Sanford. The trip down on the train Brian read to us from the Wall Street Journal and explained, quite seriously, what some of the articles were hinting at regarding the market. He was very bright but seldom serious and you could know him a long time and never get a glint of what a sharp mind the guy had. There was never any doubt he was going to be something great.

            We talked about classes and various profs and, of course, there were times we just looked at each other and nodded or made a face. I got up once to go back to the smoking car and Melinda followed me. We stood there by the sliding door and lighted up. I looked out the window at the Hudson River slipping past us.

            “Beautiful day,” I said. “It’d be a great day to be at Split Rock.”

            “Sure would,” she said, taking a drag. “We can do that some other time though, if you’d like.”

            “I would,” I said.

            She nodded and we smoked in silence a minute and then she said, “It’s actually kind of too cold now, you know? Split Rock, I mean.”

            “Oh yeah. I guess so,” I nodded. “May would be better.”

            “May first,” she said. “A May Day picnic and swim.”

            “It’s a date,” I said. I smiled and nodded but I felt stupid and embarrassed. I’d meant to say `deal’.

            We landed at Grand Central Station and Brian took control. I’d been to the city a few times but didn’t know my way around at all; I have no sense of direction, either. Brian and Barbara both lived an hour outside New York and knew it pretty well.

            We walked down to the Village and ducked in and out of book shops and art shops. In one I found a beautiful red silk kimono and held it up to Barbara.

            “This would look great on you,” I said. “I’m going to get this for you.”

            “Come on, Jack,” she said. “When am I gonna wear something like that?”

            “Well,” I said, and then I didn’t know what to say. I think I was going to say `to bed, baby’ but couldn’t get it out. I couldn’t say things like Brian could. He could get away with it.

            “Wear it anytime. Wear it when you paint.”

            She laughed. “You’re crazy.”

            “Why’s he crazy now?” Melinda asked, strolling over. She saw the kimono and said, “Wow. That’s really pretty.”

            Barbara leaned forward and said, “Jack’s buying it for you.”

            I said, “Barbara – “

            “What? Wasn’t supposed to tell?”

            “Oh, Jack,” Melinda said. “Don’t. I can’t accept it, really.”

            “I’ll – I’ll get one for each of you, how’s that? Souvenirs of the day.”

            Barbara said, “No, really. It’s just not something I could do. Frank is seriously not into other guys buying me things. I mean, it’s a big deal with him.”

            Melinda hugged me and said, “Whatever you want.” She walked off again.

            I looked at Barbara and whispered, “What’d you do that for?”

            She shrugged, smiled, and said, “You’d be good together. You’re cute.”

            I bought the kimono. I carried that damn thing around all day long and then forgot it in the stern of the Staten Island Ferry.

            We ate lunch at a great Chinese restaurant on 5th Avenue and had a few beers (except Barbara, of course, the artist, had to have the white wine). Melinda took a picture of me, Brian and Barbara sitting at the table together. She took so many pictures that day.

            Barbara raised her second glass of wine for a toast. “To our day in the big city!”

            We three raised our glasses of beer and all four clinked together. We were all smiling with a slight buzz going and Brian said, “To us!”

            Melinda said, “To lots of fun!”

            And I said, “To memory!”

            We drank and ate a little more and Brian turned to Melinda and said, “You’re a philosophy student. How come you’re not as heavy as Jack? You seem like you could almost enjoy life.”

            “Brian -” I said, but I smiled.

            She laughed and said, “I’m just a beginner.”

            “Meaning,” Brian smiled. “You’re not yet convinced existence is a total drag.”

            She laughed again and said, “You know, Jack’s tutoring me in just that subject.”

            Everyone laughed, and I had to laugh too, even though I felt a little annoyed and embarrassed.

            “Can we change the topic?” I asked.

            “So, Melinda,” Brian said. “You and Jack planning on a big wedding?”

            She smiled and shook her head.

            “Ok,” I said. “Back to the other topic.”

            “There’s no pleasing this guy,” Brian said. “You should know this about him if you’re going to be Mrs. Hunter.”

            “Brian -“

            Barbara said, “Hey. This is a crappy fortune.”

            We all looked at her and she read, “`The path of life wends through many valleys.’ I don’t want that one. Give me another cookie.”

            “No way,” Brian said. “You get the fortune you get. Don’t like it? Tough. Mine says `You will be fabulously rich and have a harem of chicks by the time you’re thirty’. Well, I already know that, but it’s nice to hear it from a cookie.”

            “Does not,” Barbara said.

            “Does so.”

            Melinda snatched it out of his hand.

            “Hey!”

            “It says, `The mop must be wet to work.'” She looked up. “Huh?”

            “This must be where they dump the discount fortunes or something,” Brian said

            After lunch we walked down 5th Avenue and up Sixth. We stopped in a little pub where a blues band was playing and had a few expensive drinks before heading to the Staten Island Ferry. Marching toward the Hudson, the four of us, arms around each other’s shoulders, Brian started singing this idiotic song he’d gotten from a Disney movie. We all joined in and sang it over and over, all slightly drunk. The bright March sun cloaking my shoulders and warming my hair, I felt myself all light and bright inside my chest and arms and legs and head and we all seemed tall and young and forever tall and young.     

            We stumbled onto the ferry laughing and attracting stares. Brian made it his first priority to land a cold can of Meister Brau in our hands and a squat plastic cup of white wine in Barbara’s. That beer was so cold it almost hurt to hold; but it was glorious going down. Brutally cold.

            We all hit the bathroom, then wandered around the decks. The wind was strong and sweet out on the water and Manhattan looked magnificent to me. Melinda and I held hands and swung them back and forth as we walked. Barbara smiled at me and raised her eyebrows. I just smiled back and shrugged. Brian was making fun of people we’d pass and recited conversations he was sure they had at home.

            After our third drink we landed back in the stern, the ship now heading back toward Manhattan. We looked out at the receding island and, in the distance, the Statue of Liberty. No one was speaking, just staring out at the river churning past us.

            Brian said, “I’m gonna get one last round before we dock. And I’m gonna do it with my eyes closed so I don’t have to see that looming chick.”

            “What have you got against the Statue of Liberty?” Melinda asked.

            Brian shrugged. “I don’t like tall women. So – all in?”

            We nodded and I went for some money but he said, “I’ll get it.”

            “I’ll help,” Barbara said, and smiled mischievously at me as she left. I didn’t know what to make of her. She turned and smiled back at me and I laughed without even knowing why.

            Next to me Melinda said, “Whew! You guys sure know how to drink.”

            I turned toward her and smiled, “Plenty of practice.”

            I lighted a cigarette and lighted hers. She said, “Thanks. And thanks for a great day. I’ve really had a good time.”

            “Me too,” I said. “I’m glad you could come.”

            “You’re sweet.”

            We stood there, side by side, looking out at the river. I was wondering where this could be going. What would happen when we got back to Elting? What she was thinking?

             And that’s when she said, “Your toast. At lunch. To memory. I liked that. Liked that a lot.”

            I nodded, not sure what to say, and looked at her.

            “That’s the thing with a day like this,” she said, staring out at the water. She took a drag on her smoke. “You’re out with friends and you’re having fun and you swear you’re going to be friends like this forever. Then a few years go by and you find an old snapshot in a drawer and you don’t even remember their names.”

            I can still see her standing there, holding her can of Meister Brau and smoking her cigarette, her long, blonde hair whipping in the wind and her brown eyes, thoughtful and sad, staring out at the river behind us.

            I said, “Doesn’t have to happen. I know that happens but it doesn’t have to.”

            “It does,” she said, glanced at me and away. “I don’t know why it does, but it does.”

            Brian and Barbara came loudly up the deck with the drinks and I turned to look at them. I saw this old couple sitting together by the rail and said to Melinda, “Can I borrow your camera? Just a minute?”

            “Sure,” she said, handing it to me.

            I went up to the old man and said, “Excuse me, sir. Would you mind taking a picture of me and my friends?”

            “Not at all,” he said, handing his paper to his wife and standing up.

            And so we gathered together on the stern of the Staten Island Ferry. He said, “Say Cheese,” the shutter clicked and there we were.

            I thanked the man and handed the camera back to Melinda. “We’ll test your theory out in a few years. Deal?”

            “Deal,” she said, and smiled at me.

            Three weeks later Melinda Carter left school before the end of the semester. Her brother, Dylan, had been in an accident. It was pretty serious.

            She never came back. We never went on that picnic to Split Rock. A few cards and one letter and that was it. We drifted apart. I never knew what happened to her.

            Two years later Brian Durham drove his sleek Olds to the Mount Carmel cemetery and gassed himself to death. No one ever knew why.

            About a month after his funeral Barbara Lauren packed her bags and headed out west to join some artist’s colony and I never heard from her again.

            But Melinda, if you’re reading this, I still remember your names.

                                                                        – END –

Naked Volleyball

When I was a kid, there was this place, once June hit, that became the most popular spot in the village – Danny Paul’s house.

            He lived a little over a mile up the road from me in a small, pale yellow ranch which wasn’t as impressive or large as my house, or the McCall place down the road, but which had something none of the rest of us had and all longed for: a pool.

            In back of the house, where the rest of us all had lawns that we had to mow, sweating as we pushed and cursed the rattling machine, Danny Paul had an enormous in-ground pool with a diving board. Not only that, he also had this really cool little bath house with a shower and a toilet and a small room we’d hang out in right next to the pool. It was all like something you’d see on the Brady Bunch or Charlie’s Angels.  

            Mr. Paul was a Science teacher at Kennedy High so he was home all summer puttering about, doing landscaping and stuff around the house. Everyone knew where the kids were and that there was an adult around and my folks, and the other parents, used to hand Mr. Paul a bunch of cash for pretty much feeding us from June until August.

            So my brother James, me, and, once in a while, Shelly McCall, used to go there with everybody else and have fun all summer. Shelly couldn’t always come because her dad was an uptight jerk who’d ground her for sneezing wrong. James and I practically lived there, though, and we almost never showed up without this other friend of ours, Harrison David. He lived two miles or so west of us on Hollow Road, just down from this girl, Kathy Daniels, who went to our church and also came to the pool. That girl was so hot she gave us all whiplash every time she showed up. Harrison always pretended like he didn’t notice her, because he was too cool for that, but of course he did. We all did.

            Harrison was my “smart friend” who just seemed like he knew everything. He was never really stuck up about it but I was always wishing I could beat him at something, get one up on him. We’d argue sometimes, like debate a certain point about school or girls or a book or whatever, and he’d always win and, when he did, he’d say, “Point goes to me,” and smile. It was that smile that would get me. It always made me feel like a nail pounded down into soft earth in one swing.

            Anyway, much as we loved the big pool parties, we preferred the days it was just us three there. This would happen twice a month when Danny and Mr. Paul would spend the weekend in Connecticut with Danny’s cousins. Mr. Paul would tell all the parents when he’d be away and would tell all the kids not to come to the pool. And no one did – except us. Harrison would ride his bike over to our place and we’d tell Ma or Pop we were off to swim at the rec park.

            Besides no people, what we loved was being able to swim without our suits on. Mr. Paul went to a great deal of trouble landscaping his place with dense pines and shrubs along the border. No one could see in, no one could see out. Laying back there naked on our towels, the sun drying us, surrounded by Mr. Paul’s amazing gardens of lilies and gladiolus and flowers of every shape and size, it was like being in the Garden of Eden – only there was no Eve.

            Harrison and I were fifteen this one Saturday in late July, James was thirteen, and, as we lay on our towels, eyes closed, I heard Harrison say, “You know, guys, this is getting a little old.”

            I sat up and said, “What do you mean?”

            Propping himself up on his elbows, as James did also beside him, he said, “You know. What is this? It’s fun and all but, come on, where are the girls?”

            I said, “I don’t know, Harry. Where are they?” I looked around the lawn, pretended to look under my towel. “You misplace them or something?”

            He smiled and said, “You know what I mean.”

            James said, “Do I ever.”

            James was going to Anderson Junior High then, seventh grade, and he already had a steady girlfriend.  I never asked James any questions about whether he’d had any devious little exploits with this girl, Sarah Tuppington, and he never gave any information away.

            But that day he said, “About girls. I’ve got a question. You guys ever see any naked?”

            “All naked?” Harrison asked.

            “Well, I guess,” James said. “I’m really just asking about the tops.”

            “Seen it in Pop’s Playboy,” I said, shrugging. “Caught Karen getting out of the shower once.”

            “Oooooh,” James said.”Hubba-hubba-hubba. Brotherly love.”

            “What’s your question?” Harrison asked.

            James lay back on his towel, staring up at the sky. He said, “Well, it’s Sarah. Her tits. They’re, like, abnormal.”

            I said, “How would you know? What are you, a tit expert? You’ve never seen her tits. Come on.”

            James sat up and said, “Have too. Done more than just look at them, too.”

            Harrison said, “So, what’s abnormal?”

            “Well, the nipple. It doesn’t go out.”

            I laughed. “What the hell does that mean? That’s what nipples do. They go out. What? Hers go sideways?”

            “No, no,” James said. “They go in.”

            I slapped my leg, laughing, and said, “That’s the most stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you say. This is just more of your bullshit. Like that time you told me Freddy the Frog wiped out everyone on the last episode of `New Zoo Revue’.”

            “Hey,” James said, pointing a finger at me. “That was all true. That’s just what happened.”

            “Sure, sure,” I said. “And this chick’s tits are backwards. Jeeze.”

            “Actually,” Harrison said, sitting up and crossing his legs like an Indian Chief. “That’s probably right. She’s – what? Thirteen?”

            “Thirteen.”

            “Well, that happens,” he said, sagely, looking at me. “The girl’s nipples don’t, uh, flower, let’s say until they get a little older.”

            “That’s bullshit,” I said. “You never noticed the headlights on here around the pool? Plenty of girls here thirteen.”

            “No,” Harrison said. “Sometimes. Sometimes that happens. Doesn’t happen all the time.”

            “So it’s normal?” James said.

            “Sure, it happens,” Harrison said, leaning back. “Don’t worry about it. I know when I’m with my girlfriend I sure don’t worry about things like that.”

            “What?” I said. “What girlfriend? You don’t have any girlfriend.”

            “Do so.”

            “What’s her name? Where’s she live?”

            “Lives in Sanford,” Harrison said, calmly, looking up at me. “Her name’s Dawn Leonard.”

            “Oh, that is just bullshit,” I said, shaking my head. But, I thought, what the hell? If this is true then I’m the only guy here doing nothing.

            “Hey,” he said. “Doesn’t matter if you believe me or not. I’m not going to be worrying about that next time I’m unrolling a condom.”

            “How do you get those things?” James asked. “I mean, how do you walk up to a counter and there’s, like, old lady Mulrow from church standing there and you’re like, `Hi, Mrs. Mulrow. Yes, ma’am, you can help me.  I need a box of those condoms for some sexy action.’ How do you do that?”

            Harrison laughed and said, “You don’t. You know Ed’s Service Station on Nine?”

            “Sure.”

            “Next time your dad stops there for gas, you say you have to take a piss. Make sure you got quarters on you. Ed’s got a machine in there. All the rubbers you want. Fifty cents each. Stock up.”

            “Wow,” James said, his brown eyes suddenly clouding. “That’s great.”

            I watched him sitting there, lost in his dirty little delightful daydreams. I looked at Harrison, stretched out beside me looking at the pool. I turned and looked down at my feet.

            And then I heard myself saying, and from whence this came I can’t tell you, “Yeah? Well I did two girls once. Two. At the same time.”

            “Now that’s bullshit,” Harrison said.

            “What?” James said.

            “Yeah,” I told them, making sure I looked them in the eyes. “You heard me. Two at once. Last month when we were camping up at Lloyd Lake.”

            James shook his head, smiling, said, “No way, man. No way.”

            “When I went off in the woods that time. Remember?”

            “You went off in the woods to write some stupid poem,” James said. “You got lost and fell down a hill or whatever you said.  If you’d gotten laid, I’m sure I’d’ve heard about it then.”

            “Why?” I said. “You never tell me anything about what you do with Sarah. Why should I tell you?”

            “You did not,” he said, shaking his head.

            Harrison said, “Well? You got any proof?”

            “What proof?” I said. “Pictures?”

            “No,” he said, sitting up again and becoming Big-Chief-Talk-Alot by folding his legs. “Tell about it. We’ll judge if it’s true. It’s all in the details, right James?  So how’d it happen? You went into the woods to write a poem and, what? You were jumped by two chicks?”

            “No,” I said, frantically grasping around in my mind for any kind of story I’d ever read anywhere that might sound plausible. “No, I was, uh, writing my poem, you know? And I heard something. People talking. I was trying to ignore it but they kept it up. They were laughing real loud, too. So I got up off this stone I was sitting on and went back, following the laughing, to this grove of pines.  I just wanted to ask them to be quiet, you know?”

            “Why the hell didn’t you just get up and go somewhere else?” James said. “What? The forest is all yours to write poems in?”

            “It was a good spot,” I said. “What do you know? You ever write a poem? You know what a good spot’s like?”

            “I know you never did two girls in your life,” James said, lying down on his towel.

            “I did so,” I said.

            “Whoa,” Harrison said. “Cool it, you guys. Cool it, James. I want to hear the story.”

            “Yeah,” I said. “So I duck in under the pines and, in this little glade, there’s these two chicks.”

            “Pretty?”

            “Yeah,” I said. “Great looking. One blonde, one brown hair and they’re really built. Built like a brick house.”

            “What’s that mean?” James said. “Built like a brick house? What? They were red? They had cement coming out of their cracks? What?”

            “They were really built,” I said. “Like, big tits and all.”

            I only knew the phrase, `built like a brick house’ because this guy in my gym class once used it talking about some girl. When we asked him what that meant he had no idea and looked like a jerk. I had to ask some seniors to find out. This was the first chance I’d had to use it and I felt pretty pleased.

            “Sure,” James said.

            Harrison said, “So? Go on.”

            “So they were setting up this volleyball net in the glade. They had one side all set up and they were working on the other.”

            “How old were they?” James asked.

            “What’d I do? Ask for their ID’s?”

            “Well, how old you think?”

            “I don’t know,” I said, shrugging. “Twenty-three. Twenty-four.”

            Twenty-three and Twenty-four sounded very old and experienced to me at the time. And I wanted these two chicks to be experienced.

            “So I’m just standing there watching them stake the net, you know? And the blonde looks up and says, `Hi’ and I walk over to them and say `hi’ back and they ask me what I’m doing and I tell them and they really think that’s great, that I’m writing a poem and all. So then I ask them what they’re doing and they say they’re about to play naked volleyball.”

            James started laughing. He laughed and laughed and said, “Oh, God. Oh, Christ. Oh, oh, oh.”

            “What?”

            His stomach was shaking, he was laughing so hard. He waved his hand at me and said, “Just go on. Oh, man, I gotta hear how this ends.”

            “Well,” I said. “I asked them what that was all about. And they said -” and here I paused because I couldn’t think of any reason why two women would be playing naked volleyball in the forest of a public park. I turned, looked around my towel, said, “Where’s my water bottle?”

            “You can’t stop there,” Harrison said. “Come on.”

            “Hang on a minute,” I said, standing up. “Talking’s making my throat dry.” I walked over to my lunch sack near the bath house. Walked pretty slowly too.

            I took a long drink of water and sauntered slowly back. When I sat down on my towel again it hit me. Just like that.

            “So,” I said. “I asked them what this naked volleyball thing was all about. And they said it was a dare. They had to play a game of volleyball naked to get into this club or something at college.”

            Harrison turned to James and said, “Actually, I’ve heard of that.”

            “Yeah,” said James. “Well so has Jack. He’s heard of it.”

            “Just shut up and listen,” I said. “So they’re starting to climb out of their clothes and, man, they were great looking. They were like chicks you see in Playboy.”

            “Right,” James said.

            “And they ask me if I’ll referee, be the judge. And, this one, she asks if I’ll take pictures `because they need proof they really played naked volleyball.”

            “Pictures?” James said. “Really? How are you keeping a straight face?”

            “They needed proof,” I said. “For the club. What’s so crazy?”

            “What were their names?” Harrison asked.

            “What?”

            “Their names,” he said. “They had names, right?”

            “Sure they did,” I said, thinking quickly. I grabbed the first two that came to my mind. “Shelly and Kathy.”

            “Shelly and Kathy what?” he asked.

            “Well, I don’t know that,” I said. “I mean, we weren’t getting married, right?”

            “Most people,” Harrison said. “Introduce themselves by their first and last names. It’s habit.”

            “Yeah?” I said. “Well these chicks didn’t. Okay?”

            “Shelly and Kathy,” James said, scratching his chin and staring up at the sky. “Now where have I heard those names before?”

            “Hey,” I said. “What? People can’t have the same names?”

            “Ok,” Harrison said. “Go on.”

            “Jesus,” I said. “Thank you. Maybe I’ll get to finish this today. So they start playing volleyball and they’re bouncing and jiggling all over the place and I’m saying `Score’ and `Ok that one goes to Shelly’ and like that and, of course, I’m taking the pictures. So they’re playing and playing and, you know, I’m sitting there with a hard-on the size of Mount Everest watching them. And the more they play, you know, the more they sweat. So now here’s these two beautiful women, all shiny and glistening with sweat and their big, heavy tits are bouncing up and down and there’s, you know, little streams of sweat running down their stomachs and thighs and I had to hold my notebook very strategically, if you know what I mean.”

            I knew they did know because, in the course of my description of the game, they’d both very casually changed direction on their towels so they were now laying on their stomachs looking at me.

            Knowing I’d gotten to them I threw my head back and smiled. Looking up at the high, blue sky I said, “God, what a day that was. I’ll never forget it.”

            I took a drink of water, slowly, and then went on. “So Kathy won the game and she ran over and gave me a big kiss and she was jumping up and down and her big tits were jumping up and down too. Then Shelly comes over and says something like, `Time to pay the judge, I guess’ and they start taking all my clothes off.”

            My two scoffers were silent now and dull eyed, laying on their towels.

            “I’m not gonna go into everything that happened that day,” I said. “I’m not into that blow-by-blow description stuff. But let me tell you, they paid me all right. I could hardly stand up afterwards to walk back to the camp.”

            I looked at James and said, “You were there. You saw me when I came back. Wasn’t I all sweaty and dirty and I had twigs and stuff in my hair and all?”

            “Yeah,” he said. “But you told us you got lost and fell down a slope.”

            “Sure,” I said. “What am I gonna say? With Ma and Pop sitting there? What am I gonna say, `Yeah, I just got laid by two chicks in the woods.’ I’m gonna say that?”

             Neither of them said anything for a while and then James said, “Well, I still don’t buy it.” He stood up and started walking toward the diving board. “Good story, though, pal.”

            “Yes,” Harrison said. “Very good story. But I think if you’d really had sex you’d have gone a little more into the description of the act itself. The physical sensation and all.”

            I said, “You want details? You want physical sensation?”

            He was standing up and walking over to get his lunch by the bath house. I stood up to follow saying, “That’s what you want? `Cause I’ve got descriptions of the act itself, okay?”

            James was walking out onto the diving board.

            And suddenly I heard, “Oh my.”

            We all turned at the same time.

            Standing there by the back of the house were Mr. Paul, Danny, and Danny’s three cousins, Mary, age eighteen; Susan, age fifteen; and Annette; age thirteen. With them was Danny’s Aunt Rita and it was she who, hands to her cheeks, said, “Oh my.” They were all looking at us. Danny was grinning. Annette was laughing and pointing and her sisters were laughing, too. Mr. Paul just stood shaking his head.

            The three of us disappeared under water as fast as we could. I saw Harrison, out of the corner of my eye, bounding like a bunny for the pool. He leaped into the air, arms flailing, and splashed in on his back. James just sprang frantically into the air and I followed after.

            I tried to stay under as long as I could, like the other guys did, too. When I came up there was no one in sight by the back door. Danny told me later that his aunt had rushed the girls inside. We scrambled out of the pool and, saying nothing, struggled into our suits, grabbed our towels and lunches, got on our bikes and rode like hell away.

            When we got back to our house, we took turns changing in the bathroom, got some ice tea, none of us speaking, and went upstairs to my room. Harrison sat on the bed and James plopped down in my desk chair. I stood over near my cheap, green Sears record player and looked for something to put on.

            James finally said, “Well, that sucked.”

            “Sure did,” Harrison said. “You think he’ll tell our folks?”

            “Probably,” James said.

            “What’s the big deal?” I asked. “We were just naked. It’s not like he caught us breaking into the place.”

            “Just naked,” Harrison said. “Right. Just naked.”

            “What?” I said.

            No one spoke. I put a Queen album on the turntable and the music started up as I sat down on the bed across from Harrison. No one said anything. We were just listening to the song playing. It was James who finally spoke.

            “I’ve never really seen Sarah’s tits,” he said “I read that thing about the nipples in the question section of one of Pop’s Playboys.”

            He grinned at us and said, “Hell. I try to bump into the things every chance I get. And every time she says, `Well, excuse you’.”

            I laughed and Harrison grinned, shrugged, said, “Yeah. Okay. So Dawn Leonard’s not my girlfriend. She’s my cousin. She does live in Sanford though.”

            “Well,” I said. “At least there’s that.”

            James said, “But what about the condom machine? You weren’t bullshitting about that, were you?”

            “Why?” I asked. “You need some water balloons?”

            “Shut up,” James said. “What about it, Harry?”

            “Just walk into the bathroom at Ed’s,” he said. “There it is. You got two quarters you’re in business.”

            “You ever get one?” I said. “Ever get in business?”

            “No,” he said, smiling and shrugging. “I was afraid my Dad would come in as I was turning the crank.”

            “Oh, you guys are too much,” I said.

            “Oh yeah?” he said. “How about you? Two chicks at the same time? Really?”

            “It’s true,” I said. “So, okay. You guys were full of crap. Well, I knew that back at the pool.”

            “Come on,” James said. “You never even saw two girls naked. And I mean you never even saw, like, two of the fattest, ugliest, meanest roadkill with udders naked.”

            “You can believe what you want,” I said, sipping my tea. “I know what I know.”

            “You are so full of it,” James said, shaking his head. “You even said before that you’d only seen Playboy and, Oh God I don’t even want to think of it, our sister.”

            “Well it’s not like I was planning on telling the story. It just sort of came out. I don’t kiss and tell.”

            “You are so full of it,” James said.

            Harrison said, “Well, it was a pretty detailed story. And that part when you looked up smiling like all glory when you were remembering, well, I have to admit, that was pretty convincing.”

            Looking over at me, he shrugged, “Point goes to you, I guess.”

            Score. And I smiled at them both.

            Did it bother me that the story wasn’t true? Not a bit. I was fifteen.

            Danny called me up that night and told me it was no big deal and how his father thought it was funny even if his aunt didn’t so much. Mr. Paul never yelled at us and never told our folks or mentioned the naked day. But the next time at church he looked at me and, I swore, there was this trace of a smile in his eyes. We didn’t want to go back to the pool again, with or without clothes, and we didn’t the rest of that summer. Danny had felt compelled to tell everybody at the pool about the naked day so that there wasn’t a kid in Galen’s Mills who didn’t know about it. A week later I saw Shelly McCall talking to Kathy Daniels at church. Shelly smiled at me, shook her finger, said, “Naughty, naughty boy” and Kathy just couldn’t stop laughing. James actually felt we should go up one night, abduct Danny Paul, and beat the living crap out of him. I don’t know why we never put that plan into effect.

            A few years later, when Danny and the rest of us graduated Kennedy High, Mr. Paul had the pool filled and seeded and now it’s a lawn he has to mow. The bath house is now his tool shed and he still putters around up there doing his landscaping. It’s all different now – but I’m telling you what it was like back then.

End

Long Live Rock & Roll

            “I’ve gotta move now,” Jack Hunter said to Harrison David, stomping up the steps of Kennedy High School. “I’ve gotta freaking move.”

            “Where you going?”

            “As Shelly always says, `Somewhere not here.'”

            “You’re not going anywhere.”

            “We were horrible!”

            “Yeah, well -“

            “And that jerk Colter. `No beer, fellas. Not till after the show.'”

            “Then he gets one and dumps it all over my Rhodes,” Harrison said. “You can’t play Kansas with just the Moog. You can’t.”

            “Unreal,” Jack said.

            They entered together through the open glass doors of the school, filing in with all the other students streaming off the long yellow buses rumbling in place out front beneath the clear September sky.

            “I said to him, `How come you’ve got a beer then?’”

            “That was hell.”

            “Let’s quit his damn band and start our own.”

            “He wants to do the battle still.”

            “No way,” Jack said. “Uh-uh. I’ve gotta move as it is. How many people you think were at Guilder’s party?”

            “Enough.”

             They crossed the pale gray linoleum of the lobby, eyes averted from possible contact with any of the partiers at Jack Guilder’s the past Saturday night – but Melissa Perry was standing in profile over by the bulletin board and, of course, she caught their attention.

            “She is so hot,” Harrison said.

            “Sure, she is.”

            “Thank you, God, for secondary sex characteristics.”

            Jack laughed – then stopped and stared.

            “What?”

            “That’s the line-up for the Battle of the Bands. We’re up there.”

            They pushed sideways through the on-coming traffic of students and up to the long board, Jack almost shoulder-to-shoulder with Melissa – though now oblivious even to her.

            “Holy God.”

            “No way.”

            On a large, white sheet of cardboard was the 8 x 10 James Hunter, Jack’s younger brother, had shot of the band in the Hunter garage back in July. Beneath the picture it read, “The dark horse for this year’s Battle of The Bands is the quartet Eddie Goo-Night and the Hot Dogs. Fronted by Keith Colter on guitar, with Harrison David on Keyboards, Jack Hunter on bass, and Jim Josephson on drums, these boys promise a night of rocking to the tunes of Kansas, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple – and who knows what surprises they’ve got up their sleeves – word has it they’ve put together a killer light show. `Just get ready to rock,’ front-man Colter says, `Cause we will rock your world.'”

            “Unreal,” Jack said, softly.

            “Oh, boy.”

            “Who’s Eddie Goo-Night and the Hot Dogs? Aren’t we Jerry’s Bent?”

            “We were at Guilder’s, anyway.”

            “What the hell?”

            “Hey,” Melissa said, as Jack bumped her.

            He slumped against the wall, staring down at his sneakers.

            “God -“

            “You got a problem?”

            “What?”

            “He’s just in shock,” Harrison said.

            “I’ll give him a shock.”

            Harrison pointed at the picture on the wall. “We’re -” 

            Pat Terran slapped Harrison on the shoulder and he turned.

            “Hear you boys really stunk up the place at Guilders,” Pat said, grinning.

            “Stow it, Terran.”

            “Carry on, my wayward son…” Pat croaked, dancing away down the hall.

            “Stow it!”

            Jack said to Melissa, “We’re in – that band.”

            “Really? That is so cool. Who – are you?”

            “Jack. This is Harrison.”

            “Wow. And you guys really play these groups?”

            From his position slumped against the wall Jack was easily reading the Jethro Tull logo on the t-shirt stretched across her chest.

            “Yeah,” he said. “Sure. And – and we play Tull.”

            “No way.”

            “Sure do.”

            “That is too cool.”

            “You like Tull?”

            “Can you read?” she said, thrusting out her chest and gesturing with her hands.

            “I can now.”

***

            Walking down the hall toward homeroom, Jack said to Harrison, “Maybe it won’t be so bad?”

            “We’re not ready.”

            “Melissa Perry thought we were real cool. She talked to me.”

            “Miracles do happen.”

            “How’d he come up with that name, though.”

            “My fault,” Harrison said. “Hate to admit. It was a joke. When he called yesterday, he said we needed a new name after Saturday night. I said, `We sure do. How about Lora Nell and the Bouncing Beer-Drenched Boobies or Guilder’s Scapegoats or maybe Eddie Good-Night and the Hot Dogs? And he yells, `Man! That’s so retro! Like Paul Revere and the Raiders! Strike a blow for old time rock and roll!'”

            “Eddie good-night and the hot dogs…”

            “No, it’s goo’ night, now.”

            “Great. Thanks a lot.”

            “Well, I didn’t think he’d take me seriously. And how’d he get it up on the board so fast? What’d he sleep over night here?”

            “Melissa thought we were pretty cool, though.”

            “She was actually talking to you, Jack.”

            “Yeah. And she’s got friends. And girls with big boobs are always friends with other girls with big boobs.”

            “Really. You know this how?”

            Jack shrugged. “Common sense, man. What chick wants to hang with another chick with bigger boobs?”

            “So all girls – all their – uh – social interactions – it’s all based on breast size?”

            “Has to be based on something.”

            “Where’d he get this light show idea though.”

            “Right,” Jack said, his head swimming with images of Melissa Perry peeling her t-shirt slowly up her body.

            “Like, where are we gonna get a light show?”

            “Right…yeah….”

***

            Two nights later, in Jack’s garage, Keith yanked the ratty sheet off the mysterious shapes he and his dad had unloaded and unveiled the light racks.

            “Where’d you get them?”

            “Garage sale,” Keith said. “Twenty bucks.”

            “They work?” Harrison said.

            “What? You think I’d buy `em without trying `em out?”

            Jack shrugged, “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

            Jim said, “You bought that Kay guitar without ever -“

            “Okay,” Keith said. “All right.”

            They stood in front of the racks of lights in the Hunter garage where they practiced – two eight-foot-long wooden racks, painted black, housing six 175-watt bulbs in each rack.

            “This is going to be mondo, man. This is going to blow so many minds they’ll be wiping brain off the gym floor Sunday morning.”

            “That’s sort of disgusting,” Harrison said.

            “Desperado?” Keith said, smiling, slapping his hands together in front of his face. “Eat my dust.”

            “Hey,” Jack said. “I don’t think – just `cause we have some lights doesn’t mean -“

            “He’s going down, Hunter,” Keith said, shaking his head and walking away from the lights. “Let’s get these babies hooked up and try them out. Come on.”

            “All I’m saying,” Jack said, moving the lights into position with Harrison. “God – these weigh a ton! I’m just saying Gench isn’t just – we can’t just think we’re gonna bring down Steve Gencher with a light show.”

            “We’ll kick his butt,” Keith said. “We’ve got three weeks to get it together.”

            “I don’t know,” Jim said, shaking his head. “Desperado’s real good. And Gench is, like, the coolest guy. Why don’t we shoot for a nice even show and leave the competition to -“

            “Cause we’re gonna beat Desperado,” Keith said. “We’re gonna win.”

            “How?”

            “We’re gonna do it by believing we’re gonna do it.”

            Jack said, “Keith? You may believe you look like Jimmy Page, and maybe you even do – but that doesn’t mean you are Jimmy Page.”

            “What – like – what does that even have to do with anything, man? Duh. I know I’m not Jimmy Page.”

            “Forget it.”

            “What? Jeeze. Try making some kind of sense, Hunter.”

            “Ok. What I mean is -“

            Harrison patted Jack on the shoulder and said, “Don’t try.”

            Crouched by the second row of lights, Jack sighed and shook his head. Looking down, he said, “Hey, man, were these in a fire?”

            “What?”

            “This stuff looks all melted. Right here at the end – and – and there.”

            “Where?”

            They gathered hovering over Jack’s back. “Here. And right there.”

            “Just wear and tear,” Keith said, walking away. “Let’s get squared away here and try them out.”

            By the door in the side of the garage the rakes rattled and they heard, “Sorry, gents. That is just not going to happen.”

            “Hey, Pop.”

            “Hi, Mr. Hunter.”

            Henry Hunter stood in the doorway untangling a blue tin rake from the claw of a plastic red one.

            “Boys?” he said, yanking at the rake. “I hate to disappoint you but I’d hate more to have to take up living in a cardboard box. No lights in here.”

            Keith shrugged and said, “I tried `em out at the garage sale, Mr. Hunter. They didn’t -“

            “It’s too much of a draw. And they don’t look in any great shape. You guys can practice here all you want – no problem – but don’t go plugging in those lights.”

            “Can’t we just try them for, like, a second?”

            “Not a second. Not a half a second. And, if I were you, I’d leave them alone altogether before you blow yourselves up.” Henry Hunter lifted his hand, palm out, and backed through the door, holding the blue rake. “But I leave that decision up to you.”

            Jim said, instantly, “I vote we leave them alone.”

            “No,” Keith said. “That’s twenty bucks sitting there!”

            “Yeah,” Harrison said. “If they’re so great, how come you got them for just twenty bucks?”

            Keith shrugged. “I don’t know. It was a fire sale.”

            “A what?”

            “Look, ok. We won’t try out the lights. Not tonight anyway – but let’s get to work.”

            “I want to add Tull,” Jack said.

            “We’ve got a set.”

            “I want to add Locomotive Breath. Opening song.”

            “No way,” Keith said, shaking his head. “Opening song’s Space Truckin’.”

            “I want to add Tull,” Jack said, strapping on his heavy Kramer bass guitar.

            “Jeeze, Hunter,” Keith said. “What gives?”

            Jack shrugged. “I’m laying down the bass line. Just learned it this week.”

            “What the hell, Hunter?”

            Harrison said to Keith, “Melissa Perry.”

            Jim nodded. “She’s hot.”

            Keith sighed, shaking his head.

***

            Two days later, as James entered the garage to get the lawn mower, the band re-drafted their roadie from Guilder’s for the Battle of the Bands.

            “What are you thinking?” James whined, sitting in the seat of the Ariens lawn mower. “You guys gluttons for punishment?”

            The band stood before him, Jack and Keith with their guitars slung over their shoulders, a Fender Stratocaster copy by Kent and the Kramer bass, their Fender and Oliver amps humming, Harrison at the keyboard of his Rhodes with the brown Moog synthesizer on top and Jim Josephson swiveling behind his red and black tiger-striped Slingerland kit on his small black stool.

            “Fall off the horse,” Keith said. “Get right back on.”

            “No way,” James said. “I had enough `You guys suck’ at Guilders.”

            “You’re just the roadie,” Jack said. “We had to take the worst of it.”

            “I got the overflow.”

            “There was probably a lot of overflow,” Harrison said, running his hand over the keys.

            “James,” Keith said. “Do nothing, ok? We’ll set up. We’ll haul it all in and everything. Just – when we go to change? We need someone to make sure no one screws with our stuff.”

            “Like who’s gonna do that anyway?”

            “Some disco freak,” Keith said. “You know this past summer every single song in the top ten’s been Disco? It’s like cancer, man, and we’re the cure. Long live rock and roll!”

            James shook his head. “You’re the cure. What’s that mean?”

            “Disco sucks, man.”

            “So do you,” James said. “And I’ve got a whole party to back me up.”

            “You could be part of something,” Keith said. “Something great.”

            “What?”

            “Us! We’re gonna take down Desperado.”

            “Give me a break.”

            “You want to remember `79 as the year you were part of something great – or the year you let Disco triumph?”

            “Desperado’s not disco.”

            “Like hell. Styx,” Keith said, slapping the pointer finger of his right hand on the fingers of his left. “No way that’s rock. Little River Band. Kill me. The Bee Gees? Sell-out Disco Kings. Jeeze, James, at the band banquet last may they did KC and The Sunshine Band!”

            “Oh, those evil bastards,” James said.

            “I’m serious, James. Give him time, Gench’ll have Sherman singing Gloria Gaynor and – and Thelma Houston!”

            “And – wait! Aren’t those, like, the most popular tunes going today?”

            “Gench used to do Aerosmith, man. He used to play Eagles. Jeeze, Tommy Ricks is the first guy I ever heard do `Stairway to Heaven’ right. They’re sell-outs.”

            “They’re playing what people want.”

            “Like hell,” Keith said. “We’re playing what people want.”

            “You guys are ten years ago,” James said, shaking his head.

            “We play what rock and roll is, man. Deep Purple, the Stones, Led Zep, The Who. Kansas isn’t `ten years ago’, they’re right now. You want to remember `79 as the year -“

            “I’ll remember it as the year I barely lived through Guilder’s party.”

            Jim said, “It got pretty wild there toward the end.”

            “Lora Nell,” James said. “What was that?”

            “Wet t-shirt surprise!”

            “Talk about `shake your booty’,” Jim said, smiling.

            “She was out there,” Jack said.

            Harrison said, “I don’t think she was too sober.”

            “I don’t think anyone was. How much Guilder drink?”

            “I thought she’d kill him,” Jack said. “I really did.”

            “She trampled me!” James said. “I had her foot print on my back. Serious.”

            “Yeah, we saw it, ok? We were there, too?”

            “Hey! Focus here, guys, focus.”

            “Look, I’m not doing it.”

            “James,” Jack said. “You’re telling me you didn’t have any fun? Not even watching Lora Nell bounce around the living room?”

            “No, that was good. That was fine.”

            The door at the side of the garage opened and Shelly McCall from down the road stepped in. “Hey guys. How’s it going? Mind if I listen in awhile?”

            James looked over at her a minute and then said, “I’ll do it if she does it with me.”

            “Does what?” Shelly said, looking from face to face.

            “Shelly.” Keith cried, smiling. “You want to be a part of something great?”

            “Depends…” Shelly said, crossing her arms over her chest and looking at him.

***

            Two days later, moving away from the register and out into the cafeteria in her tie-dyed shirt and jeans, Shelly heard someone shout, “McCall! Over here!”

            She wove her way past bodies and stood at the end of a table where Melissa Perry and her friends, dressed, as usual, all in black concert T’s, army pants, and black boots, sprawled over their lunch trays.  She looked down at them, “Yeah?”

            “You really doing lights for the Good-Night Eddie band?”

            Shelly shifted on her feet and said, “Yeah. So?”

            “Have a seat,” Melissa said. “Come on.”

            Shelly looked at Melissa carefully, not moving.

            “Come on, McCall. Let – uh – bygones be bygones, ok?”

            “Yeah, we’re not gonna bite ya.”

            “Not this time.”

            “Cool it, ladies.”

            Shelly sat slowly down beside Melissa and glanced around at the other girls looking at her.

            “What are they leading off with?” Jeannie asked.

            “Leading with Tull. Locomotive Breath.”

            “Too cool!”

            “They rock?”

            “Yeah, what’re they like?”

            Shelly cleared her throat, opening her milk carton.

            “They’re great,” she said, looking down.

            “That’s not what I’ve heard.”

            “Heard they really sucked at Guilders,” Trish said.

            “Well, maybe you heard wrong. Everyone was drunk anyway.”

            “That’s what I heard,” Jeannie said.

            “I heard Lora Nell was dancing topless.”

            “She’s gross.”

            “Were you there? Did she?”

            Shelly shook her head. “I – they – didn’t have any lights at Guilders so – I stayed home.”

            “They party?” Melissa said, grinning.

            Shelly shrugged. She said, “Maybe they don’t want me talking about what -”

            “They gonna beat Gencher and Ricks?”

            “Yeah, they gonna take down Desperado?”

            “Someone has to.”

            “`I’m your boogie-man, I’m your boogie-man. Turn me on!’”

            “Sure,” Shelly said, tossing her hair. “They’ve got a chance.”

            “No way.”

            “Really?”

            “Really,” Shelly said. She looked steadily at them all and then quickly drank her milk.

***

            Sprawled like a well-fed bear on a bench outside The Rink, two days before the show, James Hunter took another drink from his can of Coke and continued regaling the girls around him with tales of his life as a roadie for a rock band.

            “Well, the thing you gotta understand about the Guilder party, it was nobody’s fault.”

            “I heard Keith Colter was drunk and dumped his beer,” Kathy Daniels said. “Was he?”

            Jennie Earl said, “He is so sexy.”

            “He just looks like Jimmie Page, you know?”

            “That hair?”

            “Was he?”

            “I love that hair.”

            James held up his hand and studied his finger nails.

            “There was some drinking,” he said, nodding. “And, sure, it got pretty wild before it was over. But all the stuff people are saying about the band – it’s just not true. It all went wrong at the end and Jack Guilder’s just trying to blame somebody.”

            “I’ve heard it from more than just Jack Guilder.”

            “I heard they really sucked.”

            “That’s what everyone’s heard,” Sandy Perretti said. “That and Lora Nell giving it up to Guilder in the living room like a stage show.”

            “That never happened either.”

            “Everyone’s talking about -“

            “Yeah? Well, I was there, ok? Nothing happened like that.”

            “Not what I heard,” Sandy said, looking away.

            “Anyway,” Kathy said. “I heard Keith saying they’re gonna take Desperado and – just – no way that’s gonna happen, is it?”

            “Kathy? I don’t want to start rumors, ok? But they’ve got a solid chance.”

            “No kidding.”

            “I kid you not.”

            “Huh,” Kathy said, nodding. “I – oh, there’s my mom.” She grabbed her skates. “Say hi to Jack for me.”

***

            In the garage of the Hunter home, the night before the show, Jack yanked the strap off his bass, planted it on its stand, and yelled over at Keith, “We are not.”

            “Don’t fall apart, man.”

            “I’m not falling apart. We’re starting with Locomotive Breath. We agreed.”

            “We agreed to learn it,” Keith said, holding up his pointer finger. “Not lead with it.”

            “Am I nuts?” Jack said, turning toward Jim and then Harrison. “Am I – what – Shelly,” he said, whirling toward the back of the garage and the long work bench. “James – help me out here – am I losing my freaking mind? Haven’t we been playing Locomotive Breath as the lead song all week?”

            “Hey, man,” Keith said. “It’s my band, ok?”

            “Well, it’s my garage.”

            “Well, big deal. It’s my band.”

            “Well, big deal. We’re leading with `Locomotive Breath’.”

            “Hey, guys,” Harrison said. “Can we cool it and get back to practice?”

            “Sure,” Jack said. “If we’re practicing `Locomotive Breath’.”

            “You think that chick’s gonna jump you just because you play her favorite song?”

            “If we play it right.”

            “What chick?” Shelly asked James, quietly, swinging her legs.

            “Lissa Perry,” James said. “And did I see you actually hanging out with her crew at The Rink?”

            “Yeah,” Shelly said, smiling. “Roadie perks!”

            “You’re moving on up.”

            “Fine,” Keith said. “Fine. We’ll play your song. And tonight? We’ll play it first. Tomorrow night it comes second.”

            “No way.”

            Jim said, “What’s the big deal, Jack? So it’s second. So what? She’s still gonna hear it.”

            “We agreed on it as lead.”

            “He’s right, Keith,” Harrison said. “You did.”

            “Jack likes Melissa?” Shelly asked James.

            “Parts of her,” he said, watching the fight.

            “Huh.”

            “Why?”

            “I don’t know,” Shelly said, then looked down at her swinging feet. “Didn’t seem his type.”

            James looked sideways over at her as she sat looking at the band arguing in the dim light of the garage.

***

            Under the glare of the bare bulbs encased in steel mesh high up on the ceiling, reflected brightly by the shining wood of the gym floor, the members of Eddie Goo-Night and the Hot Dogs laid down Mrs. Josephson’s discarded rug, smoothed it out, and rolled the amps onto it.

            All around the gym, counter clockwise from a small tower of black-painted plywood being raised beside them, other bands were pushing and pulling amps, running patch cords, screwing together the legs of electric organs. The air was thick and hummed with voices. A large spotlight on a gray trolley rumbled across the blonde wood of the floor, pulled by two guys from the Student Council.

            James, watching them, hit the switch on the Oliver and then gazed over at the members of Desperado building their slowly looming tower.

            Jim, settling his tom on top of his bass drum, shook his head at Harrison. He said, “I just hope they don’t play as well as they build or we’re cooked.”

            Out on the floor in front of the rug, Keith and Jack stood, surrounded by girls, Kathy Daniels and Melissa Perry among them. Kathy waved to him and then started across the floor.

            “Hey, Kath,” James said.  

            “What’s Desperado building?”

            “Their own temple, looks like.”

            Shelly came around to the front of the rug and started pulling the light rack.

            “Hey. Shelly – you need a hand?”

            “Thanks.”

            “These are heavy.”

            “Light show,” Shelly grinned. “Keith says it’s gonna be great.”

            “You seen it?” Kathy said.

            “No one has,” James said. “Pop wouldn’t let them try it out.”

            “God. These are really heavy.”

            “Just hope they work.”

            “They’ll work,” Keith said, walking up with Jack beside him. “It’ll all work.”

            “It better,” Jack said. “With that castle going up next to us we’ll need something big.”

            “We won’t need a thing,” Keith said. “We’ve got all we need already. Rock and roll.”

            “Let’s get it going,” Jack said. He bent down, unlatched his long, rectangular bass case, and drew out his Kramer.

            James looked at Shelly who smiled brightly back. He said, “Ready, fellow roadie?”

            “I’m so excited I can hardly breathe,” Shelly said.

            “Let’s tune up, men,” Keith said.

            “Catch you after the show,” Kathy said, moving back toward the other girls out on the floor. “Good Luck.”

            The gym was thickly packed with students and the lights were low. Jack, his bass hanging heavy on his shoulder, stood stage right watching Desperado play their set. The tower platform assembled, the drum kit sat squarely on top and Steve Gencher, the best drummer Jack thought he’d ever heard, was pounding the skins while Tommy Ricks waltzed up and then down the ramp of the tower, ringing lightning from the neck of his Gibson.

            “Unreal,” Jack whispered, shaking his head.

            From out front, stage right and left, gels in twelve-foot towers flashed with the beat – purple/white – red/green. Larry Boden slapped the strings of his Rickenbacker bass and smiled at the clapping crowd while Jeff Sherman, hemmed on three sides by keyboards, belted out the lyrics to the Styx tune `Renegade’.

            Harrison left his piano and yelled in Jack’s ear, “They’re better than last year.”

            “They’re amazing.”

            Sherman, mike in hand, slapped sustain on his organ, turned, and howled up the ramp as Tommy Ricks leaped past him, dropped to his knees before the audience, and made the guitar scream high. Sherman bounded down the ramp, leaped, and landed his fingers on the keys, full volume. High behind his kit on the tower, Steve Gencher thundered down his toms to a finish with the double bass. He jumped up, stood high, holding his sticks overhead, in the bright white light of the spot.

            The crowd roared. A low, slow chant began out on the floor – “Desperado. Desperado. Desperado.” The lights came up and then, as one, the many feet shuffled across the floor to stand half-ringed in front of Jack and the band and the chant dissipated into the babble of voices.

            Keith, up front, turned and said, “This is it, cats. Let’s rock this town.”

            Jack turned and saw James and Shelly, back behind Jim, holding the cords to the lights. He called, “After the first measure.”

            Keith gestured to a man standing out on the floor, hanging to the side of the large mobile spot light. The gym lights went down, the mumble and rumble of voices hushed, and, from out of the darkness, the man’s voice shouted, “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Eddie Goo-Night and the Hot Dogs!”

            The crowd cheered as Jack plunged into the opening bass line of Jethro Tull’s Locomotive Breath – and Keith ripped open Deep Purple’s Space Truckin’ – Harrison, looking from one to the other, shouted, “Hey!” And Jim’s beat stumbled over itself, faltered, chose one tack, then shifted toward another. Turning, Jack whipped up the volume on his Oliver and tore at the strings for Tull.

            “Space Truckin’!” Keith yelled, switching to Tull. “It was supposed to be -“

            “Tull! Just play it!”

            Jim caught the beat, they wobbled, they were off, and Keith cried into the mike, “In the shuffling madness -“

            And there was an apocalyptic flash and heat as the racks of lights at their feet flashed blindingly on. The crowd cheered. Jack staggered back, eyes closed, into his amp.

            “-of the locomotive breath. Runs the all-time loser -”

            Opening his eyes, squinting, he saw Harrison playing blindly at the Rhodes and Jim, eyes tightly shut, pounding the beat.

            “- headlong to his death – Well, he hears the pistons scraping – steam -“

            Jack played, his back to the audience and the blinding lights, watching Jim and Harrison when – there was a loud `pop’ behind Jim and an enormous pillar of flame shot up into the dark twenty feet. James and Shelly were dancing in a panic backwards and Jim leaped forward, over the front of his kit, landing near Harrison’s piano. Harrison slammed his fingers down hard on the keys and the chord boomed loudly in the darkness. Everywhere was smoke. The room seemed to hang in a dim, white haze. Jack staggered back, hearing Keith’s guitar choke on its own chords and scream to a stop.

            The crowd was rumbling out in the darkness, the only light now the mobile spot.

            “Please remain calm,” the man’s voice said out of the dark. “Remain calm. Please. Proceed to the exit at the front of the gym.”

            Something whizzed past Jack’s face and something else, hard, hit his forehead.

            “Awesome!”

            “Hot Dogs!”

            “Do it again? Do it again!”

            “Hot Dogs! Hot Dogs! Hot Dogs!”

            Pennies were flying at them. Some girl’s underwear landed at Jack’s feet.

            “Keep playing!” Keith yelled.

            “I can’t see!” Jack called back.

            The man’s voice in the dark said, “Please refrain from throwing objects at the band and proceed to the exit -“

            Jack stood still, staring around him, as the man’s voice over the house speakers continued moving everyone toward the front of the gym.

            “Great light scene, man!”

            “Fry the place, hot dogs!”

            “Good-night, Eddie!”

            “Tull!”

            Through the smoke haze Jack saw Melissa Perry give him the thumbs up, walking quickly toward him. She grabbed his shoulders and pulled him to her, kissing him deeply on the lips.

            “I think I love you now,” she said, smiling. “Freakin’ awesome.”

             She moved away with the others toward the doors.

            Keith stood at the front of the rug, gazing around. Before him, rubbing her eyes where she sat on the floor, Kathy Daniels stood up and walked toward Jack.

            James and Shelly came around from behind Jim’s drum kit. They were both laughing.

            “What happened?” Kathy asked.

            “I don’t know.”

            “We plugged it in and it just – blew up.”

            “Keith, you really try those things out?” Harrison asked.

            “Who cares? No, all right?”

            “You see that flame?”

            “I thought I was gonna die,” Shelly said, laughing. “That was so freakin’ cool.”

            “You kids all right?” the man said, walking up.

            “Sure,” Keith said.

            “You tripped a circuit. When we get the power back you want to go again?”

            “I swear, I thought I was cooked,” Shelly said.

            “Me, too,” James said. “Thought you were cooked, I mean.”

            “That was so cool,” Kathy said.

            Keith looked over at Jack who shrugged, nodded.

            Keith said, “Sure.”

            The man said to Keith, “I’ll tell you, that was a pretty dumb stunt with the fire? But you’ll probably wind up with something tonight for best effects.”

            “No kidding?”

            “You’ve already scored with the name. Most original. Go for performance. But no lights this time.”

            “Don’t have to worry about that, I don’t think,” Keith said, looking down at the smoking racks.

            Kathy said to Jack, “Hey, you did good. Won for best name?”

            “Yeah, great. But we – man, it all went wrong.”

            Kathy shrugged. “What went wrong? It sounded great.”

            Jack looked down at Mrs. Josephson’s worn rug, shook his head.

            “Far out, man!” a voice yelled. “Far out!”

            Tall and slim, in his trademark orange tank-top and green shorts, Steve Gencher was suddenly striding up toward Jack, hand out.

            “Hey, man,” he said, pumping Jack’s hand. “Far out. Man, that was gone.” He yelled over to Keith, “Fine stuff, Colter.”

            Behind him, Tommy Ricks smiled and nodded at Jack, glanced over to take in Kathy casually.

            “Too much, man,” Steve said. “How’d you do that fire? Freaked me out.”

            “Yeah, it was – something,” Jack said.

            “It was gone,” Steve said. “Just solid gone.”

            “That it was.”

            “Should’ve known you’d trip out the power, though,” Steve said, moving away. “Even so,” he pumped his fist in the air twice. “Rock on, men! Tull!”

            Jack gazed after Ricks and Gencher walking back over to their equipment. He shook his head slowly.

            “And I dig your name,” Gencher called back.

            “Which one of you’s Eddie?” Tommy Ricks asked.

            Keith waved and Ricks laughed, “Go, hot dogs!”

            Keith called over to Jack, “So we cool now, Hunter? We try it again?”

            Jack sighed. Kathy smiled at him. He called back, “Lo-co-mo-tive Breath this time, ok?”

            “Whatever. Let’s rock and roll!”

            “Kathy,” Jack said. “What’d you think? How’d it sound from out there?”

            “From out here?” Kathy said. “It was amazing.”

End

When There Were Trees (published in Writes for All Magazine, February 2012)

            “Can’t live – if living is without you…”

            Jack Hunter, eyes tightly closed, sniffed again, clutching his pillow, and let his breath out in slow, halting rasps through his teeth. From the stereo on the dresser by the bed Nilsson was weeping his lament of lost love.

            “Can’t live – I can’t give anymore…”

            Jack opened his eyes and stared ahead at the blurry radiator. Mouth open, he rolled over onto his back and dragged his palms down his cheeks.

            The song was ending. He jumped off the bed and quickly lifted the needle from the record before that damn lime-in-the-coconut song came on.

            He clicked the stereo off and stared down at the record slowly spinning to a stop.

            Sniffing again, he walked to his desk, yanked a tissue from a box, and blew his nose. He looked at himself in the mirror above the desk and shook his head – then walked slowly over and sat down heavily at the end of his bed. He sighed slowly and gazed out the window to his right.

            After awhile he became aware of the wet tissue still in his hand and tossed it over at the garbage can by the desk. It sank through the air to the floor. He looked away, back out the window. He felt like hearing that song again. He’d been listening to it over and over all day, as he had yesterday. He thought that song would now be the only one he’d need the rest of his life. Said it all, didn’t it? In the entire sixteen years he’d lived so far on the planet he couldn’t think of another tune that was written so clearly for him.

            “Unless there’s some song out there called `Life’s a burning hell’. Maybe if there’s that….”

            Outside the window, South Creek Road stretched down from Hollow and all the Maple trees were shedding leaves in a swirl of late October breeze. The leaves rushed down from the trees, scooped up cups of dust and stone from the road, and flung them wildly into the air before settling down to earth, skittering across the pavement to lodge in grass and bush.

            He looked away from the window and out the other ahead of him, then looked at his desk, followed the line of wall to his bookcases, past them to the third window, across his closet, past another bookcase, toward the door.

            “Out,” he whispered. “I want out. All these books. All these books and not one of them is any good when I need it.”

            He looked again out the window to his right. The roof of the porch was just beneath the sill. No, he thought, jump from here you’d maybe break your ankle’s all.

            The school bus he should’ve been on hissed to a squeaking stop below him and he saw Gertie, the driver, open the door. He dropped his chin to his chest and closed his eyes. He looked back up as the bus lurched away up the hill and, standing on the far side of the road, shielding her face from the leaves and dust, was Shelly McCall. She wasn’t walking down toward her house, though. She was looking up at his window.

            He shook his head and sighed, looking down at her. Now what? Well, he could always pretend he wasn’t home. Hell, it wasn’t that he didn’t like the girl. Nothing like it. They’d been friends forever. But who the hell wants company when you got all you need right over there on the stereo?

            She stood across the road, squinting in the wind, her blue back pack hanging from her shoulder. She was wearing those tight jeans she favored and the old ratty army shirt he’d given her over a white t-shirt. Jack smiled. The girl looked good in anything. He watched her checking to her right, then left, and then start across toward the house.

            She’ll come up the fire escape. He nodded, watching her veer from the direction of the front door right, toward the stairs which climbed up the side of the house toward the door outside his room.

            He watched her and remembered Liz saying, “Wow, man. It’s like you’ve got your own private entrance!” And then she’d looked at him and smiled that smile and said, “This could come in very handy, you know.”

            The tears broke again hot from his eyes and his chest felt thick and heavy. He stood up, wiping at his face, and walked toward the door of his room. Already he could hear Shelly pounding up the outside stairs. He pushed through his door, walked down the hall, yanked open the outer door, and was standing there as Shelly made the landing.

            She looked at him and said, “You look awful.”

            He nodded and turned back toward his room.

            “No,” she said, closing the door. “You really look like shit.”

            He waved over his shoulder, nodding, and walked into his room.

            Following, she said, “James told me. So, you aren’t really sick at all. You just don’t want to see her.”

            Jack lay down on his back on the bed, looking up at the ceiling. Shelly dropped her back pack by the desk, walked over, slapped at his legs. He moved them and she sat.

            “Gotta go back to school sometime.”

            “I guess so.”

            “She wasn’t all that great anyway, Jack. You know? Come on.”

            “I don’t want to talk about her.”

            “Fine,” Shelly said, slapping her knees. “We won’t talk about her. What’s gonna happen Monday morning? Or you think your mom’s gonna go for the stomach ache routine until June?”

            Jack felt his throat tighten and he swallowed, wiped again at his face. He unclenched his teeth and said, “I – don’t know what’s going to happen Monday. Monday – is as far away as – maybe I won’t be around by Monday.”

            Shelly looked down at the pale blue carpet and then over at the books spilling out of all the bookcases. She said, “I know what you mean about that. I know. I’ve felt that. Get mad at my dad and – well, you know all about that. I’ve thought of killing myself more than once. Know what stops me? I say, `Well, I can kill myself or I can go up the road and talk to Jack.'”

            He stared at the wall hanging above the radiator. The tapestry depicted horses advancing slowly toward him through a woodland pond, ringed with tall pines and, in the distance, snow-capped mountains rising into a blue sky. He sniffed and shut his eyes.

            “So – you know – if you’re going somewhere, I’m coming with you.”

            Clearing his throat, Jack sat up slowly and looked at her. “I was thinking of it,” he said. “I was listening to Nilsson, man, and that’s all I could think of. I – don’t think I can live without her, Shelly. I – don’t.”

            She reached out and patted his leg, nodding, then moved closer and held him as he began to cry.

            “It sucks, I know.”

            “It does.” he said, into her shoulder. “It all sucks. I didn’t have anything until her and – and now – I don’t have anything again.”

            She held him closely to her, softly stroking his back.

            He sniffed angrily, pulled away and got off the bed, walking quickly over to the desk.

            Shelly sighed and looked down at the carpet while Jack blew his nose – and then again.

            “If it’s any consolation,” Shelly said. “I never liked her. She wasn’t right for you.”

            Jack cleared his throat and said, softly, “Don’t talk about her.”

            “And you do so have something. You’ve got me. There’s Danny. James is nuts, but you got him. There’s Harrison.”

            Jack shook his head, gazing out the window. “You don’t know.”

            “Maybe not,” Shelly said.

            Still looking at the carpet she said, “Ok. Well, instead of killing yourself, I’m running away tonight. You want to come along?”

            Wiping his nose, Jack said, “Where you going?”

            “Somewhere not here.”

            Jack sniffed, sighed, said, “What you gonna live on?”

            Shelly shrugged. “I’ve got some cash.”

            “Yeah? What? Fifty bucks? Like, that’ll last you.”

            She shrugged again. “You want to kill yourself over a girl – I want to run away from my dad. Difference? I’ll still be eating Pop-Tarts tomorrow and you won’t. So, you can’t live without Liz – so let’s dump this life. We’ll start a new one somewhere else.”

            Jack looked out the window. Just hearing her name made his chest tighten and fresh springs start from his eyes.

            “Why you running away? Why now?”

            “Last straw. He broke my Roger Daltrey album. On purpose.”

            Jack nodded, looking out the window at the blowing leaves.

            “Let’s take a walk,” he said.

            They moved along North Creek Road, away from both their houses. It was still the unpaved road they’d played on as children but the land had been bought up and there were the skeleton frames of new houses rearing up on both sides of the road where the tall trees once grew.

            From his shirt pocket Jack drew a pack of his father’s unfiltered Camels and, as he’s seen his dad do with is mom, shook the pack in Shelly’s direction so one lone cigarette poked out from the torn opening.

            Shelly glanced at it and then took it from him.

            “Bad habit to get into,” she said.

            “So’s living,” Jack said, and lit his smoke. He handed her the lighter. “It’ll make you high,” he said. “You just have to not inhale a lot. Take short little drags. Make you feel better.”

            She lit her cigarette, took a drag, coughed.

            Her eyes watering, she said, “So – this is how you’re gonna do it? Smoke yourself to death?”

            “I don’t smoke,” Jack said, looking away at the new wood frame of a house. “I just – fool around with these things. They make me feel better.”

            Shelly laughed and squirmed away from him across the road.

            “They do!”

            Jack smiled at her.

            “Really. I feel like I’ve got laughing gas or something in my stomach.”

            “See?” Jack said, standing still, smiling at her. “Just short drags, man. You don’t inhale a lot. It’s like someone’s tickling you from the inside.”

            Shelly walked over to him, wiping at her eyes. “Too bad they gotta stink.”

            “Yeah, well, you get used to it.”

            “Get used to lots of things that aren’t any good.”

            They walked slowly down the dirt road as the leaves from the remaining trees brushed their shoulders slow falling to the earth and blew past their sneakers. 

            “But I’ll never get used to this,” Shelly said, waving her hand. “God. I mean, this was our woods, Jack. We used to play here when there were trees. I can see you now, wearing this thing,” she tugged at the front of her army shirt. “when we played war and it was so big on you. And right out there was that old Oak was home when we played tag.”

            “I saw them take that down. Tree probably a hundred years old and it was gone in an hour. Less.”

            “That’s so sad.”

            “It’s been there all my life and now it’s gone. Like everything else.”

            “Why they always have to knock down every tree to build one stupid house is beyond me. And I mean that. It’s just – beyond all my abilities to understand. Don’t they think people in the houses’ll want trees around?”

            Jack nodded. He stood still, staring out at the frames jutting sharply up from the concrete foundations. “Want to hear something funny? Pop says they have to stop the building cause of ground water problems. They knocked down all the trees, right? And I guess they didn’t do something right or check something out `cause now every one of these houses is going to have something like five feet of water in the basement and the whole thing was a big mistake. That’s how come they stopped building, he says, till they figure out – what to do.”

            Shelly shook her head slowly. “People are so stupid. Why didn’t they think of that before they cut all the trees down? I’m only sixteen and I know I’d sure think before I cut down a tree. Ground water. Don’t they know trees suck up water? I mean – oh, forget it.”

            They walked on down the road and, after awhile, Jack said, “Lot of fun we had playing out here. Good times.”

            “Yeah,” she said, nodding. “I remember. We had the snow fort over there. You and me against Danny and James.”

            “Kicked their asses.”

            “Sure did.”

            “Well, that time, anyway.”

            They walked on slowly, gazing out across the dry mud of the barren fields, torn with tire tracks, at the tall frames of the houses.

            Jack shrugged. “Everything goes, though.”

            “All started with Daniel Boone.”

            “What?”

            “It did. Remember that show? He was always cutting down trees and building log cabins all over the place. Started there.”

            “Yeah,” Jack said. “Maybe. He did cut down a lot of trees, as I remember.”

            “It was still a pretty good show.”

            “Fess Parker.”

            “Yeah. Who names their kid `Fess’?”

            “Probably wasn’t his real name,” Jack said.

            “Even worse. Who’d name themselves Fess?”

            Jack nodded.

            They walked on.

            “So, why’d she break up with you?”

            Jack dropped the pinched and soggy cigarette to the ground and stepped on it.

            “Church picnic Sunday,” he said, watching his sneaker grind tobacco and thin paper into the dirt of the road. “I was hanging out with Kathy Daniels? Just talking, right? Well, someone Liz knew just happened to be at the rec park that day and told her I was `all over’ this blonde girl.”

            Shelly shook her head. “No body can just mind their own business.”

            They walked on.

            “And you were just talking to her?”

            “Most of the time,” Jack said, shrugging. “James copped out of the sack race, all right? Last minute. So she asked me. What’s the big deal? So I was in a sack race with the girl. Big difference between a sack race and – doing stuff.

            “And then we had, like, a watermelon fight. Me and James and Kathy. Throwing the rinds at each other and spitting seeds and all and like that and, ok, so James got mad like he does and left and it was just me and Kathy, ok, but that’s still not like I was – out with her or anything.”

            “I like Kathy,” Shelly said. “I’ve always liked her.”

            “She’s ok,” Jack said, shrugging. “Sure.”

            “Like her a lot better than Liz.”

            “Thanks for the news. Like I could’ve missed it. None of you liked Liz.”

            “And you never wondered why? She treats you like shit. She’s mad cause you hung out with Kathy? She hangs out with every guy who’ll -“

            “Just stop it. Ok? Stop it.”

            “And you take it! I don’t get it.”

            “Stop talking about her!”

            “Fine!”

            They walked on, more quickly now, not speaking.

            Shelly paused and pulled pieces of tobacco off her tongue. She crushed out her cigarette and spat on the ground – and then again. “I don’t think I could get into these things.” She ran her tongue around her teeth, making a face. “So, did you tell Liz all that?”

            Jack sighed, wedging his hands into his pockets. “I didn’t even mention it Sunday night `cause I was so tired when I got home. She said, `How was the picnic?’ I said, `Fine.’ She said, “What’d you do?’ I said, `Nothing much.’ Then Wednesday we’re in the hall and I say hi to Kathy and Liz gets all crazy cause I’m talking to another girl. So, I get her calmed down after forever and I’m thinking life’s not really a piece of shit and she comes at me after seventh with this face and how I’m cheating on her and Jerry or Jeremy or whoever told her all about the park on Sunday. I had to pull the stomach flu scene. I didn’t know what to do. How to – I – am I wrong? What’d I do, Shel? Tell me, did I do something wrong?”

            Shelly shook her head and sighed. “I don’t know. When I was going out with Tim he’d get jealous over my Queen posters. Forget Daltrey. You just – don’t know with people.”

            Jack sighed and shook his head, watching his sneakers as they walked on down the road.

            “Hey,” he said. “Roger Daltrey. Right. So – your dad?”

            “Last freaking straw. Son of a bitch broke McVicar.”

            “That’s a great album.”

            “And he thinks I’m stupid. You know? That’s what gets me. He thinks I’m an idiot. I only play my records in my room. And I wouldn’t even be able to do that if you hadn’t given me your old Sears player – and I find McVicar down in the living room and it’s snapped in half in the sleeve sitting on a chair and I’m just freaking out and dumb ass says, `You ought to be more careful with your things. Leave `em laying around, they’re apt to get broke.’ I didn’t know what to say to him. Did not know – what to say. It was just such bullshit. There is no way I left that record down stairs, first of all, but, second of all, the thing’s silver, you know? It’s not like Jim Croce or Dylan with all the muted colors. It’s real noticeable. So how stupid do you have to be to not see a silver record laying on a chair you’re gonna sit down in? And he didn’t even say he was sorry!”

            Jack shook his head, looking away at the torn-up fields and dirt-encrusted piping laying alongside the road. He looked over at Shelly and said, “Unreal. Didn’t say he was sorry?”

            “No. Just more of his what-I-should-be-doing rap. How I should take better care of my things. But he did it on purpose, I know he did. I did not leave that record in the living room. And I know he hated it.”

            “Sure he did. `My Time Is Gonna Come’? Your anthem, man.”

            “My anthem. My anthem and it’s – broken! But – it figures. It figures. The son of a bitch can’t leave me anything. What’d I expect? Should’ve just listened to it at your place.”

            “Know what I’ve been thinking? Before this whole – Liz thing even. I’ve been thinking of going to China after school. I keep saying stuff and doing stuff and I keep expecting people around me to understand what I’m saying and doing, you know? And they don’t. They don’t understand shit. Like your dad. So I started thinking, why not go to China? At least over there I won’t expect anyone to understand me, right? I don’t know Mandarin and they don’t know English. Same’s what I’ve got here – just minus the stupid expectations.”

            “So we’ll run away to China.”

            “Takes money to run away to China, Shel.”

            “Ok, so it’s run away to China or kill ourselves. Which do you think?”

            Jack looked down at the dirt road moving beneath his feet. “Killing ourselves is a whole lot more realistic than China.”

            “How?”

            “Well, first of all, we’ve got no money. Second of -“

            “No. How? How would we do it?”

            Jack stopped and looked at her and she looked back. He wet his lips and said, “Pop’s got a gun. A Luger. He brought it back from the war. It’s old, yeah, but it’d work.”

            “A gun? Too – messy. I think we take a joy ride. Smash into a tree. Take dad’s station wagon.”

            “And if we don’t die?” Jack said, walking again.

            “That’d be bad.”

            “Bad? There’s not even a word for it.”

            “Pills. There’s – your parents have any pills around?”

            Jack shook his head. “Nope. Well, can you overdose on aspirin?”

            “No.”

            “Didn’t think so.”

            “Jump off your roof? Your house is pretty high.”

            “I can’t stand heights.”

            “You’d be killing yourself.”

            “Couldn’t do it,” Jack said, shaking his head. “Drowning isn’t an option either. Can’t stand deep water. No way.”

            “Wrists?” she said, holding her palms out toward him.

            “Don’t you think that’d hurt? And – what if it didn’t work?”

            “Well, besides the gun, you got anything?”

            He shrugged.

            “We keep walking then,” Shelly said. “We get to the end of this road and keep walking. So we don’t have any money, so what? We just walk – see what happens.”

            “I don’t want to keep walking. I don’t want to see what happens. I’m tired of what happens, ok? I’m tired of it. Before Liz I was invisible at school. I hated every morning when that bus came – hated it – and now – now that’s what I’ve got again – hating every morning of my life. And most of the time now I feel like a stranger in my own house. And, believe me, I know who I’m talking to, ok? I know life in your house is a whole lot worse than mine, all right? But that doesn’t mean I’ve got nothing to complain about.”

            “I didn’t say you had.”

            “I know your dad’s a – pain in the ass. Worse, ok? I know – and, and mine’s not like that, ok. But – well – I guess it’s like what Frederic Douglas says – you give a slave a harsh master and he wants a kind master; you give a slave a kind master and he wants his freedom. So, you know, if I lived with your dad, I wouldn’t expect anyone to understand me. I’d be – well – like you – waiting to get out. But Pop, man, he understands so much and he knows so much – but I never get the feeling he knows me at all anymore. And forget about understanding.”

            Shelly shook her head. “Well, if we’re not gonna keep walking, let’s go home. I’m getting cold.”

            They turned around and started back up the road. Far ahead, a truck rumbled off Hollow onto North Creek and slowly turned into one of the abandoned driveways.

            “We could get hit by a truck,” Shelly said.

            “We wouldn’t be that lucky.”

            “No, I’d push you. Then I’d jump. Squashed.”

            “And you’re telling me a gun’s messy?”

            “Right,” she said. “And then what if I lost my nerve after I pushed you? I’d have to live with killing you the rest of my life.”

            “You’d have done me a favor.”

            “Can you die from drinking too much? We could snatch some booze. If we don’t die, we’d at least get drunk.”

            Jack looked at her. “That idea has some appeal to it.”

            “Then,” Shelly said, pointing at the air. “Wait. Then – well, we just find something at Grand Union that says you shouldn’t mix with alcohol. Cold pills or something. That’d work, right?”

            Jack shrugged. “I don’t know. The idea of snatching some booze is all I’m thinking about now.”

            “That’d just take care of tonight.”

            “I’ll take what I can get.”

            “No, if we’re gonna do it, we’re gonna do it and end it. We’ll go together. All right. Now – where do we do it?”

            “Does it matter?”

            “If we’re gonna kill ourselves right it’s gonna take a little planning. What if we decide we’ll do it down at Hughes Point? Then some park ranger comes past and we’re busted for the booze instead of winding up dead? Or let’s say we do it in your room – then James comes in and revives us?”

            “Where is James anyway?”

            “Oh, yeah, he said to tell you he’s taking the late bus. I forgot.”

            “The late bus,” Jack said, nodding. “See, here’s the thing. My parents aren’t home tonight till seven. Now you tell me James won’t be home till later either. I know where this Luger is. I know where the clip is. And I know how to pull a trigger. You’re talking about we gotta plan for this and we gotta plan for that. I’m saying bullshit on planning and bullshit on the booze. We get back to my house and we shoot ourselves.”

            “Who shoots who?”

            “What?”

            “Well, what is it, a cannon? It’s gonna take us both out at once? There’s two of us. So – who shoots who?”

            “I’ll – shoot you. Then myself.”

            They walked on further, slower than before, both looking down at the road. Jack heard Shelly say, “All right.”

            “Really?”

            “Let’s do it. But walk faster. I’m really cold now.”

            They didn’t speak again, trotting up the road. Shelly put out her hand and Jack took it and held it tightly.

            Back home, Jack lifted the pistol down from the top of the linen closet, got the clip from the lower drawer of his father’s desk. He pushed the clip sharply up into the grip, heard the `click’, then hurried down the hallway toward his room, palms sweating.

            Shelly sat on the end of the bed, looking away from him, out the window. Jack walked up to her quickly, racked the weapon, and she turned. He brought the barrel of the pistol up and pressed it against her forehead saying, “And all I do is pull the trigger.”

            “Do it.”

            “What – if it doesn’t work?”

            “You’re gonna miss from there?”

            Jack lowered the gun and looked at her. He raised it again and she closed her eyes. She was trembling, he saw. Lowering the gun again, he gingerly took it with his left hand and held it out to her, saying, “You shoot me. You shoot me and then shoot yourself. I can’t shoot you.”

            Shelly opened her eyes. “I – can’t shoot you.”

            “Well I can’t shoot you, either.”

            Shelly licked at her lips and stood up, taking the weapon from him. She raised the pistol, pointed it at Jack’s head, then lowered it to his chest.

            “What would be quicker?”

            “How the hell would I know?”

            “Well I don’t want you to suffer!”

            “Hey, I know,” Jack said.

            He turned around and knelt on the floor in front of her.

            “I saw this on the news once. In Vietnam they killed prisoners this way and it looked pretty quick. You just shoot me in the back of the head.”

            He heard Shelly’s voice saying, “And who’s gonna shoot me in the back of the head?”

            Jack stood up and turned toward her. “What do you want me to do? You want me to shoot you in the back of the head? Then who’s gonna shoot me? Huh?”

            “Well, god damn it, Jack, that’s what I asked you back on the road! Who shoots who? And we agreed you’d shoot me. So shoot me, then.”

            She pushed the gun roughly into his hands.

            “Careful!”

            “What’s wrong? Afraid it’ll go off? What do you think we’re doing here? Now, shoot me.”

            He raised the pistol to her face and she closed her eyes.

            “Do it.”

            He looked down the barrel of the gun at her forehead glistening in the twilight of the October dusk of the room. Her hands were at her sides and she stood very still, chin raised.

            The Luger was heavy in his hand and he felt the sweat running down his sides. He looked at her face, the line of her jaw, her angular nose, her hair.

            “Shoot me, Jack. Go on.”

            He took a deep breath. His whole body seemed to be constricting with his finger on the trigger.

            “Wait a minute,” she said, eyes still closed.

            She opened her eyes as he lowered the gun and let out his breath. He felt his heart beating fiercely all through him.

            “I – haven’t had sex,” she said.

            “What?”

            “I’ve – never had sex. Like done the whole thing. I think everyone should at least have sex before they die, right?”

            Jack shrugged, the gun in his hand. “I guess.”

            “Have – you?”

            “Uh – sure. Sure, I have.”

            “Well,” Shelly said, pulling off the army shirt and tossing it on the bed. “Would you mind having it with me before you shoot me? It’s something I think we should do before we die.”

            Jack watched her pull off her sneakers and unsnap her jeans.

            “Shelly -” he said. His mouth was dry.

            “Take your clothes off. Come on.”

            She was stepping out of her jeans –

            And the phone rang.

            Jack jumped. Shelly, mid-step, looked at him.

            Neither of them moved.

            The phone rang again.

            “You gonna get that?”

            “It might be Liz.”

            “It might be your folks.”

            “So what?”

            “So, what if they’re coming home early and you don’t answer the phone and they find us?”

            “We’ll be dead! They’ll find us!”

            “Having sex, you idiot!”

            “You answer it.”

            “What if it’s your folks? I answer it – what are they gonna think?”

            “It’s you, Shell. It’d be different if I had Liz over here.”

            “Just answer the phone, Jack.”

            “I can’t. It might be her!”

            “She broke up with you. Why’s she gonna call you?”

            “I don’t know! I just – can’t deal with it!”

            “So what if it’s her! She was a slut, anyway!”

            “I’m not answering the phone, Shelly! I’m not answering it and if you say anything like that about Liz again I’ll blow your head off. I’ll blow your head off I will!”

            “Oh, fuck you!”

            Jack brought the pistol up quickly as Shelly yanked her jeans up. She looked at him as he looked down the barrel of the gun.

            The phone was still ringing.

            “So? Shoot me.”

            She snapped her jeans, still looking at him, and walked quickly out of the room.

            He heard her feet running down the hall toward the desk out at the top of the stairs. The phone rang again. He realized he was still holding the pistol out in front of him, aimed at empty air.

            Slowly Jack sat down on the bed. He could hear Shelly’s voice faintly from down the hall. Looking down at the Luger in his hand, he turned the weapon one way, then another, gazing at the black metallic sheen in the light of the dying day. It was a cruel looking device. He sighed, glanced out at night descending down beyond the window, then stared at her army shirt crumpled on the bed. He lay the gun down and reached out, felt the familiar cloth, lifted it slowly from the bed, moved it between his thumb and fingers before settling it gently back down.

            Shelly appeared at the door and said, “Here’s the deal: It’s Danny Paul. We can either kill ourselves or we can go with him and his dad out for pizza and a movie.”

            “What movie?”

            “Ordinary People.”

            “That’s supposed to be good.”

            “That’s what I said. So?”

            “Both of us?”

            “Yeah. He was calling me next.”

            “You want to?”

            Shelly shrugged, “Why not?”

            “Ok, then. Let’s.”

            “I’ll tell him.”

            “But – are we – still going to have sex?”

            “Not if we’re gonna continue to live.”

            She vanished from the door and her feet padded again down the hall. Jack sighed. He popped the clip out of the pistol and then racked it again, ejecting the bullet sideways onto the bed. He reached out and picked it up, holding the small, shining oblong piece in his fingers, looking down at it. Standing, he gazed out the window to his right at the blowing leaves cascading down from the trees in the October twilight gloom. He put down the pistol and pushed the bullet back into the clip, gazing down at the army jacket on the bed. He felt his eyes ache heavily and, in his chest, felt the sudden weight of time unseen.

END

Half-Naked Chicks in Cages (a long short-story of 8,000 words; unpublished)

            Under a high canopy of blue, the Sanford County Fair passed the early morning hum, slipped into the mid-morning rumble, and exploded into the afternoon roar. Traffic crept miles from the gates on Route 9, Parsonage and Mulberry streets, and people spilled through the walk-in gates, had their hands stamped, and stumbled with strollers and chattering kids onto the grounds. On livestock hill the line for the 4-H milk shakes snaked back past the last cow barn. The old engines in the Antique Village sputtered, smoked, and banged for the dense crowd of spectators. The buggy races had just finished at the Grand Stand and the Beer Tent was packed to overflowing.

            The 1980 Talent Search, produced and directed by Henry Hunter, had finished the morning rehearsal run and now, before the final show at one, a hypnotist held the stage, amazing the crowd under the long tent with feats of psychic sleight-of-hand. The double Ferris wheel spun high into the blue above the sprawling midway, the Round-Up slanted sideways spinning screaming faces, Flying Bobs went up and around to the beat of E.L.O. tunes off `Xanadu’, and the Arcade was thronged with men and boys beating and tilting the pinball machines.

            The din of the midway pursuing like a mad truck driver, Jack Hunter wove through the too-thick crowd on the narrow walk quickly. Ahead of him, his younger brother James narrowly avoided pushing people out of the way and fiercely dodged strollers in his flight for freedom.

            Running behind Jack, Danny Paul yelled out, “This is nuts, man.”

            “Telling me.”

            “I get it,” Harrison David said, running next to Jack. “I understand it perfectly.”

            “He’s nuts,” Jack said. “That’s all there is to get.”

            “No,” Harrison said, breathing heavily. “I mean I get why they want to kill him.”

            They saw James dart between the Boat Club booth selling donuts and cider and the Vagabond Marching Band stand with thin hamburgers frying by the open front.

            Following closely, the teen-agers ran up the small knoll behind the booths, passed the thin Oak tree, and trotted toward the long-striped tent and white barn-shaped building of the Talent Search which James, glancing not once behind, had darted into.

            “So, he comes back here?” Danny said. “Like she won’t look for him here?”

            “I’m telling you, the guy’s nuts.”

            “All right,” Harrison said. “He’s dead. This is the first place she’ll look.”

            “Sure,” Jack said, walking around to the back of the building. “That’s always been the problem with Pop running the Talent Search. Where else would she look?”

            They walked up the small ramp at the back of the building and down the narrow hallway. The dressing rooms were to the left and, to the right, the staff office and store room for sound equipment.  Jack swung the door to the office open and saw no one. He moved into the room and peered around the arch into the store room.

            “The hell are you doing?”

            “Shut up!”

            “What the hell are you doing?”

            Danny and Harrison squeezed in behind Jack in the cramped space of wide speaker cabinets and wobbling mike stands.

            “Did you shut the door?”

            “Of course,” Harrison said.

            “Well, shut up then.”

            “She’s not going to look for you here?” Jack whispered.

            “She’s not going to open up the office door!”

            “Christ! Of course, she is!”

            “Yeah,” Danny said. “She wants your head. You think that door’s gonna stop her?”

            James’ face looked almost as white as the outside of the building against the dark brown wall, and he was sweating, breathing hard. “Well what do I do?”

            Jack said to Danny, “Get up and see if anyone’s coming. Anyone out there?”

            Danny scrambled up onto a large, black speaker cabinet and looked out the small open window facing east. “You mean like a lynch mob of girls lead by Tammy Conklin? You bet!”

            “Oh, crap,” James said.

            Turning toward Harrison, Jack said, “They see you with us?”

            “I doubt it. I entered the drama once the chase was on.”

            “Good. You go out and tell them he’s not here.”

            “Hey, who’s the chick with the knockers? Hey, James -“

            “I’ll be ripped to pieces!”

            “Better you than me,” James said.

            “Come on, Harry. You’re good at stuff like this. Do your Alan Alda routine and calm them down.”

            “I don’t think I can do anything! I just -“

            “They’re nearing the back,” Danny whispered. “Get out there!”

            “Yeah, just get out there.”

            “What do I say?”

            “You haven’t seen us. It’s break time and you haven’t seen us. Be pissed. We were all supposed to have lunch together. Call us shit heads and stuff. Go.”

            “Jack -“

            “Go! Come on, man!”

            Harrison angrily squeezed past Jack and they heard him go out the office door, then heard his feet in the hall – and then –

            A girl’s voice sounded – just on the other side of the wall from James’ sweating head – “Hey. Is – uh James Hunter around? Or his brother?”

            Another girl’s voice: “Yeah, or his brother.”

            Jack drew his hand down his face and shook his head.

            “No. They went somewhere. I’m waiting for them to come back. I’m not supposed to be stuck here all by myself.”

            “Do you think they’ll be back soon?”

            “I don’t know. They better be back before the show starts, though, the – shit-heads.”

            “When’s that?”

            “That’s – uh – at one.”

            “One, huh?”

            “What time’s it now?”

            “It’s half past.”

            “Twelve-twenty.”

            “No, your watch is slow.”

            “Is not.”

            “Well, we’ll be out front -“

            “We’ll all be out front -“

            “Is so. It’s half past. Look.”

            “Right – all of -“

            “You tell him -“

            “Doesn’t mean you’re right.”

            “- and we’d like to see James when he gets back. Tell him Tammy would like a word with him.”

            “I’ll tell him.”

            “And his brother was with him – I saw him. We want a word with him, too. Low life.”

            “We’ll get him, girls.”

            “Oh, don’t worry about that.”

            “I’ll tattoo his butt with my boots!”

            “They’re really not here?”

            “I’ll – tell them. I – don’t know when they’ll be back, though. It could be a long time.”

            “Not if they have to be back at one.”

            “Right. Sure. Here – uh – you’re blocking the way for this lady. Could you all -? That’s right. Hey, sorry, but could you all move it around outside? Let’s just sit in the tent, okay?”

            In the corner of the store room James made a grimace and shook his head back and forth. Jack put his hand up. He gestured to Danny at the window who, slowly, raised his head up and peered out.

            “All clear,” he whispered down. “They’re heading for the tent.”

            “I’m cooked,” James said. “God. I’m – what am I going to do?”

            “Who is that girl with the knockers? Man! James, you know?”

            “You’re so stupid, man,” Jack said. “Why didn’t you just break up with the girl like normal people do?”

            “I thought she’d get the message if I just never called her again!”

            “Yeah? Well she did. And she didn’t like it much, I guess.”

            “God.”

            Danny, legs swinging from his perch on the speaker, said, “We just have to hide you all day. Just stay back here. We’ll tell your dad you’re sick.”

            “Danny?” James said. “Have you noticed it’s hotter than hell in here? Forget that. I’ve got to move.”

            “I think all exits are covered,” Jack said.

            “Not straight back. I go over the fence into House of The Future. Cross the lawn? Home free. I’ll wind up at the Picnic Tent. You can tell Pop we switched positions. I’ll take the Picnic Tent today.”

            Jack nodded. “Sure. That’s a plan. Unless she’s got someone watching the back.”

            “I didn’t see anyone stay behind.”

            “What? You counted the girls in the mob?”

            “The chick with the rack. Who’s she?”

            “Will you shut the hell up about the chick with the rack?”

            “Yeah, shut the hell up!” James hissed. “What if there’s one out in the hall?”

            “Hey,” Danny said. “Where’s Harrison?”

            “They killed him,” James said. “Or holding him hostage.”

            “Where did he go?”

            “Danny. Check outside.”

            “Why me?”

            “They’re not looking for you. Duh!”

            “Wouldn’t kill you to just tell me who that girl is.”

            “I don’t know what girl you’re talking about, ok? I can see through walls? I was checking out their boobs on the run?”

            “Okay. Fine.”

            Danny slipped down off the speaker and was heading into the office when they heard a knock on the door – and froze.

            James waved his hands back and forth in front of his face. Jack whispered, “What if it’s a contestant?” James mouthed the words back, “I don’t give a damn.”

            Danny gestured and shrugged.

            Jack waved his hands frantically.

            The knock came again.

            James closed his eyes tightly. Jack, head in his hands, braced to receive a blow. Danny shrugged again and whispered, “What do I do?”

            The door creaked slowly open.

            “Hello? You guys in here?”

            Danny said, “It’s Shelly.”

            Jack and James sighed together as Danny opened the door fully, quickly pulled in Shelly McCall, and shut it.

            “What’s with you?”

            “Speak softly. You’re in a war zone. I’m going out to scout. The grim brothers are cowering in the back room.”

            They heard Danny go out and down the hall as Shelly put her face through the archway and smiled at them.

            “Just the sight of a girl makes me want to puke.”

            “It’s not a girl, moron. It’s just Shelly.”

            “Oh, thanks. What’s up?”

            “Long story,” James said.

            “Not so long,” Jack said, shaking his head. “There’s a mob of maybe fifteen girls looking to beat on this guy for breaking up with Tammy Conklin.”

            “Oh. I just saw her. She’s out in the tent.”

            “No kidding. That’s why we’re in here.”

            “I like your shirts this year,” Shelly said, gesturing toward their white staff t-shirts with red Fair logo. “Nice cow.”

            “Great. How about we talk about the cow another time?”

            “Well, it doesn’t make any sense to me. Man, it’s hot in here,” she said, fanning her face. “Why do they all want to beat you up? Isn’t it just – between you and Tammy? God, it’s hot in here.”

            Shelly hoisted herself up onto the speaker vacated by Danny and stuck her face out the window. She wore white shorts and sandals with a blue halter top. Jack and James watched her bounce up onto the cabinet.

            Jack said, “It would, normally, be between James and Tammy if James had just broken up with the girl instead of pretending he died.”

            “What?”

            “I did not pretend I died. I’m not a psycho.”

            “That’s your opinion.”

            “I just didn’t call her, ok? I didn’t call her. I didn’t return her calls. I guess she got upset.”

            “I guess,” Jack said. “So, we’re on lunch break just now and we’re heading across the midway to the steak booth and we hear, `There he is!’ and there’s, Christ, Shelly, like a mob of girls coming at us. It was Beatlemania, man, but none of them were fans.”

            “How do you know that? Maybe they just -“

            “A good clue?” James said. “One of them up front yelling `Kick his ass!’ That pretty much -“

            Feet sounded heavily out in the corridor and Jack put his finger quickly to his lips. The door to the office opened and then Danny was there in the arch.

            “Harrison’s got them all out front. He’s lulling them with his why-can’t-we-be-friends rap. Now’s the time, kiddies.”

            James slithered out of the corner and followed Jack through the arch. Shelly dropped to the floor and brought up the rear.

            Speaking quickly, Danny said, “It’s House of the Future route. Straight back. They catch a glimpse of you and you’re dog meal.”

            They ran in a line from the wide back door of the Talent Search building, hopped the split-rail fence, and ducked under the cool of the pines ringing the House of the Future which promised `The Future – Today’: a house which cleaned and vacuumed itself with an in-ground pool beside a wet bar inside just off the living room. A large sign read `Thirty Years Ahead of its Time’ above a chart showing the progress in housing technology from 1950 to 1980 and then from 1980 to the year 2000 when scientific advances would place everyone in flying hover-crafts and houses of the future would be commonplace.

            “I have an idea,” Shelly said, crouching on the spread of brown needles. “What if I go talk to them? Girl to girl. You know?”

            “What would you say?” James asked.

            “I’d – just tell them what a dirty, rotten scum you are but that you shouldn’t have to die for it.”

            “Yeah, they’ll buy that.”

            “Wait,” Jack said. “Maybe she can talk to them. How about this? You walk up to Harrison like, `Hey, how’s it going’ and say you’ve seen us over on livestock hill. We were running toward the far barns and -“

            “Yeah, that’s great,” James said. “Like we’re so chicken shit afraid of a bunch of girls we’re running clear across the Fairgrounds?”

            “Well, we are,” Danny said.

            “Well, we don’t want them to know it!”

            Shelly said, “No, no. That’s good. That’s good. I saw you guys at livestock hill but I was in the milk shake line and didn’t want to lose my spot. That’d work.”

            Danny said, “Then we – get back to getting lunch and all?”

            “Until they come back,” Jack said.

            “Right,” said James. “Thanks to helpful Harry there they know we’ve gotta be back by one.”

            “You think that’s why he didn’t come back in?”

            “He’s checking out the goods, is all.”

            “Who’s got a watch?”

            “It’s twelve thirty,” Shelly said. “A little past.”

            “God.”

            “You are one jerk, you know that?”

            “Shut up,” James said. “I’m getting out of here. I had the plan before. They don’t know Pop does the picnic tent too.”

            Jack said. “You know, maybe if you’d ever really volunteered to do my stint at the picnic tent, you’d know how many people show up in there just to get out of the heat – like maybe Tammy and the terrors will?”

            “I’ll go talk to them,” Shelly said.

            “I’m just going to the tent.”

            “No, let her go. If we clear them out of here, we can at least move around and get some lunch. Hiding under a freaking tree, here, man, it’s ridiculous.”

            “Hey, there’s Harrison!” Danny said.

            “Get him!”

            Danny hopped the fence and caught Harrison just as he was entering the back of the building. They watched the two talking and then start to walk swiftly toward the fence. As they approached Shelly said, “Uh-oh.”

            James didn’t wait. As soon as he saw where Shelly’s finger was pointing and caught the glaring pink of Tammy Conklin’s t-shirt, he wriggled beneath the low-hanging limbs of the pines and was gone.

            “Jesus!” Jack said, wriggling after him, and laughing.

            Shelly followed.

            Up from the pines, Jack and Shelly followed James’ lope across the long front lawn of the House of the Future, over corners of blankets, past people smoking, baby carriages, and out into the thick crowd of the lane – past the Walk-A-Way Sundaes, T-Shirts `80, Fried Dough, Snow Cone King, kids with balloons, babies crying in strollers, sweat-plastered parents trudging behind their children. Zig-zagging between the staggering throng, they made the midway and headed for the shelter of the Picnic Tent.

            “Forget the tent,” Jack said, catching up with his brother. “The arcade. They’ll never go to the arcade.”

            “Good.”

            “I wouldn’t go to the arcade,” Shelly said. “What’s it with that place and fat tattooed guys?”

            “I don’t know,” James said. “But I love every fat tattooed guy so much right now I could – rub their fat, hairy tattoos.”

            “Don’t get carried away.”

            They veered right, away from the crowd, down a smaller lane lined with game-booths, enormous stuffed animals hanging overhead. They passed the Ring-Toss and the Bulls-Eye game with the small rifles jutting out from the red-topped counter. A handwriting analysis booth, where new technology could accurately assess one’s personality, was next, claiming state-of-the-art computers at work. Passed another ring toss with elongated Coke bottles as prizes and then a sand art booth charging two dollars to create a masterpiece.

            “Come on in. Try your luck. Take a chance, kid? Hey, friend, take a shot?” Darts. Skee-ball. The Challenge – a net you had to climb over an inflated mat to reach the prize. And then, ahead, the faded brown tent of the arcade.

            They moved quickly, not speaking, until they were almost in front.

            Shelly said, “Now what?”

            “Now,” Jack said. “We – wait a minute. That’s right. Now what?”

            “We hang out. Play some pinball. Go back at one.”

            “They’ll hang you from the Oak. And they’ll hang me, too, just for being with you. What the hell did you have to take off for? We don’t know she saw us.”

            “It’s her fault! `Uh-oh’- and I freaked.”

            “She was looking right at us,” Shelly said. “And don’t blame me. I’m suffering for just living down the road from you idiots. I was just dropping in to say hi.”

            “Where’s your folks?”

            “Antique village. They were gonna hang out at the Search awhile anyway afterwards.”

            “So – pinball?” James said. 

            Under the tent it was momentarily cooler than out on the walk – but then the clinging fog of cigarette smoke and solid heat of many bodies hunched sweating over the beeping and zinging machines draped them like a moist blanket. Men and boys were at every machine. A fat man in a booth wearing a black tank-top, hairy, tattooed arms, counted cash. They moved slowly over the beaten-down grass in the warm, muted light of the brown tent – past a boy beating on the sides of Space Invaders, the whirl and spin of KISS and 6 Million Dollar Man machines. A Charlie’s Angels game,  next to Star Trek, erupted in screams and bells, the `tilt’ light flashing, as a tall biker with the requisite tattoos and sideways-slanting cigarette yanked it up off the grass.

            “Forget it,” Shelly said. “This place is hotter than your store room. And it stinks.”

            “We’ll play a few games,” James said. “Just stay toward the front.”

            “I don’t get pin-ball,” Shelly said. “It’s just luck. You hit the little flippers and you get what you get. There’s no skill involved.”

            “I’ll find a machine and show you how wrong you are,” James said. “Plenty of skill.”

            “Combination, I think,” Jack said. “Some skill, some luck.”

            “No way,” Shelly said. “How hard is it to hit the thing with the flippers? So up it goes and you’ve got no control over it. Luck.”

            “I’ll give you a demonstration in your wrong-ness,” James said. “Just let me find an open machine.”

            “Good luck,” said Shelly. “And one toward the front, remember? Place smells like a locker room.”

            “Sort of looks like one, too,” Jack said, turning his head.

            “How about -“

            “Oh, crap,” Shelly said. “It’s Keith.”

            “Colter? Where?”

            She pointed. Keith Colter was hunched over a Playboy machine in the back corner, flanked by his band-mates Jeremy Dugan and Vinne Surico.

            “He thinks he’s so hot,” Shelly said, looking at him. “Like he’s the greatest thing at Kennedy High.”

            “He’s going out with Kathy,” James said. Did I tell you? Kathy Daniels?”

            “In his dreams he is,” Jack said.

            “Did he tell you that?” Shelly said.

            “Yeah. I met up with him at Dairy Queen last month,” James said.

            “He’s a – scum.”

            “What’d he do to you?” Jack said.

            “It’s what he does to girls all the time – and he’s not doing it to me, that’s for sure. But he’s trying.”

            “Kick him where it counts,” James said. “That usually does it.”

            “What’d he say about Kathy?”

            “They were going out, he said. Got to third with her. And that was a month ago. So…”

            “He did not,” Jack said.

            “He said -“

            “Guys!” Shelly snorted. “You’re all just – ridiculous.”

            “Hey, don’t get all twisted and bent,” James said. “Girls and guys, guys and girls, put `em together and you got a world, you know?” He began to sing, “My daddy lies over the ocean, my mommy lies down on the sea. My daddy lies over my mommy. That’s how they got little old me! It’s just nature. How it is.”

            “Brilliant,” Jack said. “You write that yourself?”

            “I think it’s from the Bible.”

            “You’re nuts.”

            “Yo! Fugitives!”

            They turned and saw Danny and Harrison coming up quickly.

            “How’d you find us?” Shelly asked.

            Harrison said, “Just thought of the one place on the fairgrounds girls don’t go and came here. Simple.”

            “Listen,” Danny said. “I used Shel’s plan. Said she’d just stopped by and you two were spotted up on livestock hill. Man, you should’ve seen it. Like – like a swarm of bees, man, they all jumped out of their seats and flew.”

            “So – they didn’t see us?” James asked.

            “Guess not.”

            Jack slapped his brother in the back of the head. “See that, you idiot? We could’ve stayed there.”

            “Oh, lay off. You’re not the desperate renegade.”

            “Man, the guy gets killed in that song. Maybe you don’t want to-“

            “Thing is,” Harrison said. “When they don’t nab you on livestock hill, they’re sure to return to the search.”

            “Oh, man, what the hell am I going to do?”

            “You could just face the music,” Shelly said. “Get it over with. What are you gonna do when school starts next month? Hide under your desk?”

            “If that’s what it takes.”

            “You should’ve stayed with Sarah Tuppington,” Danny said. “At least that chick had tits.”

            “Tammy has tits.”

            “Not like Tuppington, she doesn’t.”

            “Excuse me,” Shelly said. “Could we change the subject? God. Guys. You know, guys are really like pigs.”

            “Oink, oink,” Danny said, wrinkling up his nose and sniffing her.

            “Go away,” Shelly said, laughing.

            Harrison said, “Not all guys are like that -“

            “Here comes Alan Alda again,” James said.

            “Well, we’re not. And I’m pretty sure once the amazons get through with you, friend, you won’t mess with their tribe again.”

            “I don’t get it,” James said. “I really don’t. What the hell? So, I don’t call the chick back. It’s not like I got her in trouble or anything or beat her up. I never even got under her shirt. Can you believe that? All this and I never even got there.”

            “Bummer,” Jack said, nodding.

            “Yeah,” Shelly said. “You poor thing.”

            Harrison said, “We really need some sort of plan.”

            “All in favor of saving my ass somehow, raise your hands,” James said.

            “That’s what we’ve been doing.”

            “All in favor of letting James face the music, raise your hands,” Shelly said. “What? I’m alone here?”

            “I’m half with you,” Harrison said.

            Danny said, “You can’t side with the girl. Sorry.”

            “I’d turn him over in a heart-beat but I don’t think he’d come back in one piece,” Jack said. “And, let’s not forget, I’m in their sights now, too.”

            “How come you?” Shelly asked.

            “I’m related to him? I don’t know. They were asking Harrison where I was just before you showed up.”

            “The plan?” Harrison said. “I mentioned we needed a plan?”

            “Sarah Tuppington. I wonder why I did break up with her?”

            “Great tits.”

            “Danny…”

            “You find out who the – the well-endowed girl was?” Jack asked Danny. “How’s that, Shel? How’s `well-endowed’?”

            “Don’t talk to me, Jack. None of you can talk to me now.”

            “Hello? Plan?”

            “I have no ideas,” Jack said. “I guess the Picnic Tent – best I can think of.”

            “Don’t know her name yet,” Danny said. “Got an up-close viewing of them, though.”

            “All right!” James said. “Space Invaders is free. Come on, Shel. Let me show you what it’s all about.”

            “Luck,” Shelly said. “That’s it. And you’re still not allowed to talk to me.”

            “You don’t know.”

            “You don’t want to play that. It’s too wide,” Danny said. “Ball goes all over the place.”

            “That’s where the skill comes in.”

            “Could they make that alien any bigger?” Harrison said.

            “It’s from the movie, Harris. Looks just like the thing in the movie.”

            “Did you see that? I didn’t know you saw that.”

            “The stomach scene where the alien pops out? Sure.”

            “Hey even people who didn’t see it know about the stomach scene, Danny. I know about the stomach scene.”

            “Wow,” Jack said. “Harrison admits he hasn’t seen a movie. Is the end near?”

            “Science fiction isn’t my thing.”

            “Everyone calm down and shut up. I have to concentrate,” James said.

            “I don’t think anyone took me seriously about that plan idea?” Harrison said. “One o’clock will come, you know.”

            “You gotta wait, man,” Danny said to James. “Wait. You flipped too soon.”

            “Are you playing this or am I playing this?”

            “It’s all how you hit it.”

            “It’s just dumb luck,” Shelly said. “Come on. `All how you hit it’ – you’re dreaming.”

            “It is,” Danny said. “Where it hits on the flipper has to change where it’ll go.”

            “Duh. Still luck. Are you making it hit where it hits or does it just hit?”

            “You control the flippers – they control the ball – so you control the ball,” Danny said. “Duh!”

            “Duh, yourself,” Shelly said. “The freaking flippers aren’t controlling the ball up there, are they? The ball’s just bouncing from one bumper to another. Whatever score you get you had nothing to do with.”

            “Of course, you did! What do you think, it just -“

            “Hey! Will you two shut up? I’m working here.”

            “He’s James Bond now,” Jack said.

            “Mission Impossible!”

            “Hah. More like Squiggy,” Shelly said, folding her arms.

            “Will you all just shut up awhile?”

            “Too soon! Don’t hit it till -“

            “Don’t tell me when to hit it, I swear to God.”

            “Yo, Sweet-Orr!”

            Jack turned. Keith was sauntering toward them, a toothpick between his lips, Jeremy and Vinnie following. He wore tight jeans and a denim shirt, open down the front, a white bandanna around his neck, Frye boots. His hair was permed and brushed his shoulders.

            Jack shook his head. “Will you stop calling me that?”

            “When you gonna graduate to jeans, man?” Keith said, coming up grinning and grabbing Jack’s hand.

            “Yo, Shelly. You’re looking real good, girl. Real good.”

            “Hey, Keith. Guys.”

            He slipped his arm across Shelly’s shoulder and said, “When you coming past to try out?” He turned to Jack, flipping away the toothpick like a cigarette, and said, “I’m recruiting back-up singers.”

            “You think that’s going to help you?” Harrison said.

            “We don’t need no help,” Jeremy said.

            Shelly lifted Keith’s arm off her and moved away, toward Jack.

            “That’s right,” Keith said, looking at Shelly. “We don’t. We were set to enter your dad’s talent show this year. Would’ve copped first prize, I know it.”

            “So why didn’t you?” Shelly asked.

            “Numb-nuts here missed the deadline.”

            “Well, you’re supposed to be the leader,” Jeremy said. “Maybe if you weren’t playing with your little girlfriend’s titties -“

            “Hey!”

            “Still doesn’t mean you’ll beat Gench in the battle of the bands,” Harrison said. “So what? You were going to enter the Search. So what?”

            “Gench was just lucky last year,” Vinnie said.

            “Lucky? He’s got a great band.”

            “Not so great,” Keith said, still looking over at Jeremy who kept shrugging and looking down.

            “Gonna be a different winner this year,” Vinnie said.

            “That’s right. This year’s battle’s gonna go a whole lot different.”

            “Like last years?”

            Keith shrugged. “I can’t help it if you guys couldn’t take the fame. You still playing, Sweet-Orr?”

            Jack shook his head. Harrison said, “I don’t play much anymore either.”

            “Safer that way,” Jeremy said.

            “No, that’s too bad. You guys were good. You should’ve stayed with me.”

            “Doesn’t matter who you’ve got. You’ll never beat Gench and the band.”

            “They’re the past,” Keith said. “We’ll take them this year.”

            “I doubt it,” Jack said. “Gench still has Tommy Ricks.”

            “Tommy Ricks?” Keith said, laughing. He pushed Jeremy out of the way, smiling. “He’s Air-Supply, man. He’s got nothing on me. Especially now. I picked up a new axe. It’s a great copy of the Les Paul. Action like pressing butter, man. I’m all over that thing. We’re opening with `More Than a Feeling’ and it’s better than Boston even.”

            “Yeah, ok,” Jack said. “But – Gench has Tommy Ricks.”

            “Get real, man,” Keith said, shaking his head. “He’s chick-tunes.” He started singing, palms together on his right cheek, head bent, “I’m lying alone with my head on the phone, thinking of you till it hurts.” He laughed, shaking his head. “Sure it hurts, dipstick. You got your head on the freaking phone!”

            They all laughed and Jack shook his head. “You got a point with that.”

            “No, no, no no no. Damn it!” James yelled.

            “It’s too wide, man,” Danny said. “There’s no way to win it. I told you. Go with Star Trek.”

            “Bad luck?”

            “Shut up.”

            “Anyway,” Keith said. “I got Kathy Daniels on lead. She cancels out Ricks big-time.”

            “You do not.”

            “We do,” Jeremy said. “She’s signed, sealed, delivered – she’s ours! Well, his.”

            “Bull,” Jack said.

            “From what I hear from a little birdie,” Shelly said. “You’re doing more than singing with her. And I mean before Jerry’s little comment.”

            Keith shrugged. “Jerry will be paying for his little comment later, don’t you worry. But, hey, you play in a band, you get a little friendly with your mates. Happens.”

            “Happen with you three?” Harrison said, smiling.

            “Watch it, hair ball.”

            “What?”

            Vinnie said, “You look like `Welcome Back Kotter’. Doesn’t he? Looks like that guy on `Welcome Back Kotter’.”

            Jack said, “Hey, Vin, you getting friendly with your mate there? What’re you doing in there?”

            “Shut up, Sweet-Orr.”

            “Leave it alone, it’ll grow on its own.”

            Harrison said, “You really going out with Kathy Daniels?”

            “I don’t kiss and tell,” Keith said, smiling widely.

            Hunched over Space Invaders glowing frame, James yelled back, “No, you just grope and tell!”

            “Watch it!” Danny yelled. “Pay attention. God!”

            “Shut up. Are you playing this or am I?”

            “Hey, I wouldn’t talk about girls, Sweet-Orr junior,” Keith said, not smiling. “I hear Tammy Conklin’s gunning for you big time.”

            “Damn!”

            “I told you, man,” Danny said. “You cannot win this thing.”

            “It’s all you morons making so much noise. And you won’t find any Sweet-Orrs on me, Colter. That’s Jack’s gig. These are Levi’s.”

            “Why is everyone so interested in my pants?”

            “They’re girl pants,” Vinnie said. “Oh, but they do go with your hair.”

            “Good one,” Jeremy said.

            Shelly said, “Well, I hate to break up this little get-together but -“

            “So, come on, Shelly. When you coming past? We need another girl.”

            “I don’t believe you’ve got the first girl yet. Maybe I’ll just call Kathy up and see.”

            “Go ahead,” Keith said, shrugging. “But don’t keep me waiting too long, honey.” He reached out and massaged her bare shoulder as he spoke.

            She slapped his hand away. “Will you stop touching me?”

            “Woah,” Keith said, stepping back, hands up. “Excuse me for living. I guess you’re wearing that top so guys will look at your hair?”

            “I’m wearing it `cause it’s hot out. I can’t help what guys look at.”

            “Well, you’re plenty to look at, you know.”

            “Knock it off, Colter,” James said.

            “Yeah, cool it.”

            “Oh, I’m gonna take it from you two? When Conklin gets hold of you, man, you’ll be minus one joystick.”

            James shook his head, turning from the game and stepping toward Keith. “Know what you don’t want to do? Piss me off. Lay off her.”

            Harrison said, “Time to get going, guys. Remember the Search?”

            “We gotta move it outside if we’re gonna do it -“

            “No one’s going to do anything -“

            “- I don’t want tattoo man on my ass.”

            “Hello? Leaving? Talent Search?”

            “Yeah, can we get going? It stinks in here – and more than it did.”

            Keith said, “Don’t get all hot, Shelly. I didn’t mean anything. Christ. Keep it together, junior. I’m not hitting on your girl. Oh, which girl are you? I hear he’s got, like, twenty-five after him.”

            Shelly stood, arms folded across her chest, looking down at the trampled grass. James limbered his shoulders, looking into Keith’s face. He grinned and flexed his fingers.

            Jack said, “Move it along, Keith, all right? It’s hot and the scene’s getting weird.”

            “Sure,” Keith said, looking into James’ eyes. “Don’t want tattoo man on my ass either. Maybe another time, though.”

            “Time and place, pal,” James said. “Name it. I’m there.”

            Keith nodded and smiled. “Just kidding with you.” He slapped James easily on the shoulder.

            “Catch you later, Sweet-Orr. Catch you at your funeral, junior.”

            “Yeah – yours too!”

            As the three lolled past toward the front, Harrison said, “Can we go back to the tent now?”

            “Oh, he makes me so mad!”

            “`Yours too?’ What the hell was that? `Yours too’?”

            “I couldn’t – think of -“

            “`Yours too’?”

            “All right! We’ve got to get back to work. Okay?”

            Danny said, shrugging, “We’ve got the same problem we had when we came in here.”

            “I don’t know why he thinks he’s so great.”

            “We’re gonna have a bigger problem if your dad’s there at one and there’s no crew around.”

            “But what do we do with the fugitive here?”

            Jack said, “Danny – you take James the slow route and land back at future house. We’ll scope out the search. Shelly will come and give you the all clear.”

            “I’m tired of this,” Shelly said. “Just face up to the girl and get it over with.”

            “Oh, no,” James said. “Too late for that now. I like my joystick where it is.”

            “God.”

            “Why we splitting up?” Danny asked.

            “In case they’re out loose on the midway,” Harrison said. “I see the plan. It’s good. It’s great. But we have to implement it – now.”

            “Don’t get up tight. Let’s go.”

            Coming out the front of the Arcade, Danny held James back and went forward alone, peering left and right, scrutinizing the crowd.

            “Oh, for Christ’s sakes,” Jack said.

            “Can we just get moving?”

            “Catch you back at the tent.”

            “Keep your head low.”

            Harrison, Jack, and Shelly moved off right up the lane while Danny and James went left. The crowd was slow moving and ponderously wide across the lane and they squeezed between the mass of moving bodies and the booths – The Giant Alligator, The World’s Smallest Horse, The World’s Largest Horse, The Ape Girl.

            “We have to check out The Ape Girl this year,” Jack said. “James saw it last year and it sounds pretty great.”

            Shelly looked up at the front of the long booth as they passed. “Yeah, looks really great. A half-naked girl in a cage is all it takes, right?”

            Jack shrugged. “He said it was funny. Hey, we got any time?”

            “We’ve got no time, Jack. None. We’ll be lucky we beat your dad back there.”

            Shelly said to Harrison, “You were half with me before. What’ll it take to get the rest of you on board?”

            Harrison shrugged. “A sex change operation?”

            “You’d have to take up shaving,” Jack said.

            “God. He makes me so mad,” Shelly said. “Like he thinks he can put his hands all over me just `cause he plays the guitar and looks cool.”

            “He was that way before he played guitar,” Jack said.

            “He’s a jerk. He treats girls like crap.”

            Jack shrugged, “Well, they let him.”

            “I’m not buying he’s with Kathy.”

            “I heard that last month,” Harrison said. “They’re going out.”

            “I’m not buying it. She’s too good for that scrub.”

            “Hey,” Jack said. “He’s a popular guy. He’s not Tommy Ricks though. I don’t know where he’s getting that idea. Tune for tune or chick for chick, Ricks has him beat.”

            “You know I really don’t like it when you say `chick’. Try `girl’, ok? Or `woman’? How about that?”

            “Ok, ok, Shelly, don’t go nuts. Sorry. I didn’t mean anything.”

            “Chicks,” Shelly said, shaking her head. “Half-naked chicks in cages. Getting to third base. Getting to home. That’s all guys are after. That’s all you ever think about.”

            “Not all guys,” Harrison said.

            “Oh, come on,” Jack said. “Under all that modern-man stuff you want to get laid as much as any guy.”

            “Maybe,” Harrison said. “But I treat girls with respect.”

            “I do, too. Shelly, have I ever treated you like Colter does?”

            “No. But we’ve known each other since diapers. It’s different.”

            “Well, I don’t treat Liz that way.”

            “She’s your girlfriend. That’s different, too.”

            “Well, I don’t treat any girl badly, that’s all I’m saying.”

            “You’re helping your brother treat one badly.”

            “No, I’m not. I’m trying to save his ass.”

            “Same thing.”

            “Not at all. If it were just Tammy wanting to talk to him, I’d serve him up with an apple in his mouth. This is a lynch mob out to kick his ass. That’s different.”

            “I guess,” Shelly said, shrugging.

            The lane was thickly packed with people now, more than before. Faces glistening brightly and hair flat under the August sun. Voices merged with the music from the rides, the shouts of the vendors. Frying onions and peppers blended with sausages, fried dough, grilled steak and people moved past clutching snow cones and cotton candy, tall red and white cones of popcorn, candy apples.

            “Christ,” Jack said. “I’m starving. We never ate.”

            “We’re out of time for eating now.”

            “All I wanted was a steak sandwich, man. Is that so much to ask for from life? A steak sandwich?”

            “I could get it,” Shelly said. “You two go back and I’ll bring you something?”

            “Would you?”

            “No problem.”

            Jack dug bills out his pocket, creating a lonely pylon of the three of them the crowd flowed about on either side.

            “God, thank you! Steak and onions – but no peppers. You want anything?”

            Harrison shook his head. “I grabbed a donut from the office before we found you guys.”

            “Here. Get yourself something, too. Your reward.”

            “Meet you back at the Search,” Shelly said, moving away.

            Jack and Harrison turned left at the end of the narrow lane and entered the wider thoroughfare.

            “This place is packed.”

            “They’re raking it in today, all right.”

            “Hey,” Harrison said. “You think Colter had anything with that?”

            “Which? Kathy or the scene with Gench?”

            “It’s all over he’s with Kathy. I mean Gench. Think he can take him down this year?”

            “No way. I’ve never seen a better drummer than Steve Gencher and I’m talking never. Put Gench in the room with Neil Peart, man, they’ll come out even. And then, you know, I’m serious about Ricks. So he does chick-tunes, so what? He’s good.”

            “He is good.”

            “Remember last year?”

            “We came close.”

            “Close isn’t the same as winning, though.”

            “Got us some hot girls, playing in that band. Got you Melissa Perry.”

            “Yeah,” Jack said, nodding, sliding between slow moving shufflers and past strollers. “Now that was a chick I wouldn’t mind seeing half naked in a cage, I’ll tell you. I mean, as long as I was in the cage with her.”

            “She had quite the rack. What happened with you guys anyway?”

            “Just didn’t work out. No big thing.”

            “Too bad, though. She did have quite the rack. How far you get with her?”

            “Not far enough.”

            “Ah, it’s never far enough.”

            Jack shrugged. “Sad, but true.”

            The blare of the midway began to recede once they passed by the picnic tent. They half-walked half-jogged around the bend by the House of The Future and moved past the Boat Club booth toward the back of the Search.

            “I just can’t see it though,” Harrison said. “How can Kathy Daniels be with Keith Colter when there’s me around?”

            “Mystery of the ages, man.”

            “It is. I’m a nice guy. I’m really nice, you know?”

            “Kathy’s nice. I remember her as this scrawny little girl trick-or-treating once with us. Don’t know how that happened but, she’s sure not scrawny anymore.”

            “She’s sure not,” Harrison said. “She’s hot. I don’t get it.”

            “Scope out front, ok? I’ll check the stage.”

            “If you’re talking about Tammy, I don’t have to. Here she comes.”

            “Christ. How’d I miss pink shirt? This is great. Now I’m gonna take the heat for that little creep?”

            “You seen your brother?”

            “Hey, Tammy, look I gotta check the stage. I’ll be right -“

            “You tell me, Jack Hunter. Where’s James?”

            “He’s around,” Jack said, walking backwards away from her toward the building.

            From the corner of his eye he saw the spreading lynch mob starting to move out from under the eaves of the tent toward him. Holding up his hands, turning his head, he said, “Hey, it wasn’t me, all right? I didn’t have a thing to do with anything. You want to talk? Great. Just let me check the stage first.”

            Tammy was advancing on him hotly.

            “Don’t you give me that shit! We saw you with him an hour ago and you ran! Ran from a bunch of girls! Now where’s your brother?”

            “He’s around, damn it! I don’t know where he is.”

            Harrison moved around the edge of the throng converging on Jack and called out, “I’m gonna get the stage!”

            “If you didn’t do anything wrong, why’d you run, huh?”

            “You were running pretty fast for someone didn’t -“

            “What’s with your brother? Huh? What’s with you, too?”

            “I’m telling Liz, all right? I know Liz Beuhl and I know what she won’t want to hear.”

            “Leave Liz out of it,” Jack said. “Leave me out of it! What’d I do?”

            “You – guy!”

            “Hey, girls, come on. I’ve got to get to work here, you know?”

            Tammy, her face inches from his own, grabbed the front of his shirt in two fists and said, “Where – is – your – brother?”

            “I don’t know!”

            He heard his shirt rip and struggled to get free – but he was surrounded.

            “I am going to knee you right in the bad place and when Liz comes to kick my ass I’ll just tell her why I had to do it and send her right back at you.”

            “Will you – let go?”

            “Where – is – James?”

            “Jack!”

            The voice fell upon them like the shout of God. Standing tall in the back door of the Talent Search, Henry Hunter, a cigarette burning between his fingers, the other hand on his hip, looked down on his son amidst the throng of girls.

            “Move your ass! Hell’s the matter with you? We’ve got a show to get on here.”

            “Ok, Pop. I’m going. I’m coming, I mean. See? I’ve gotta go. I told you,” he pulled her hands off his shirt and started away.

            The girls, in a ragged half-circle, glared after him.

            “Where’s your brother?” Henry Hunter yelled. “What the hell’s going on?”

            “I don’t know where he is,” Jack said, looking down at his torn sleeve, walking past his father and around the west side of the building. “And I don’t care, either.”

            “What’s that mean?” his father said, following him. “What the hell’s that mean? It’s almost one. I see Harrison on the stage. Where’s the rest of the crew?”

            “They were getting lunch,” Jack said, shrugging. “How do I know where they are?”

            “You’re the stage manager. You should know where the crew is.”

            “Well, James is -“

            “We’re not talking about James right now. I see James? I’ll talk to James. We’re talking about you.”

            “Ok -“

            “And what’s with the girls out back? What’s that? Your shirt ripped?”

            “Something with James. Ask James. I don’t know.”

            “You don’t know why a bunch of girls tried to rip your shirt off.”

            “It’s – I’m telling you, Pop, it’s James, ok? They want James for something. That’s all I know.”

            “Get the mikes set up. And find me your brother. And change your shirt, for Christ’s sakes! That stage swept?”

            “I’ll get it all done, Pop. Take it easy.”

            “No, not that one. The push broom. Christ’s sakes, Jack.”

            “Harrison’s got the push broom.”

            “So that means the stage is being swept, doesn’t it? Right? So get the mikes set up. And change your shirt!”

            “I will!”

            Stamping up the steps, stage left, Jack shook his head at Harrison who was just finishing sweeping off the debris left by the hypnotist.

            “When he shows up,” Jack said. “I’m first. Forget the girls.”

            “Your dad pissed off?”

            Jack shrugged, “I don’t know. I guess.”

            “Sorry I left you to the mob.”

            “Hey, at least you were doing your job.”

            “Shirt’s ripped.”

            “Thanks for telling me.”

            “Where’d they all go?”

            Shrugging again, Jack said, “I left them out back.”

            He set the mikes up in the middle of the stage while Harrison brought out the stools for the three guitarists of the first act. They made sure the emcee mike was in place and then trotted down the steps, stage right.

            Shelly was just emerging from around the side of the Boat Club booth with a paper plate held precariously in both hands and balancing a light blue snow cone.

            “At last…”

            There was a shout and something like a rumble and they saw Shelly turn and look to her left.

            Flying over the top of the split-rail fence came James with Danny Paul behind him and, right at his back, Tammy Conklin and the mob.

            James was laughing wildly, arms and legs pumping across the beaten grass.

            “Not me, man! Not me!”

            “He’s done for,” Harrison said.

            Danny, staggering and lurching, just beyond the grasp of Tammy’s reaching fingers, was not laughing as he tried to pick up speed and out distance the mob.

            Shelly held high the steak sandwich, shoulders hunched, backing up out of their way – the snow cone seemed to leap up into the air – she moved to grab it – balancing the paper plate in one hand – she stumbled –

            “No! Damn it!”

            “There goes your lunch.”

            They watched the white plate fly up into the air and then Shelly was lost behind the stampede of girls as Danny went down under Tammy Conklin in a savage roll and other girls tripped over them. Jack heard Tammy yell, “Go on and get him! I’ve got this one!”

            The girl with the rack was the first to step on Danny’s legs as she ran over him pursuing James.

            “Wow. She is well-endowed,” Harrison said, nodding.

            Struggling to gain his feet, gripping the front of Tammy’s pink shirt, Danny said, “I’ll rip it! I swear to god I will. I will rip this shirt right off you!”

            “Try it!” she screamed into his face, clutching the neck and front of his shirt. “I’ll rip yours!”

            “I’ll let go – you let go!”

            “You let go first!”

            “You got more to lose!”

            They were rising together up off the grass, pulling at each other’s shirt.

            “I swear I’ll rip this thing right off you!”

            Tammy brought her left foot up hard into his crotch and Danny released her shirt, falling sideways onto the ground.

            Without speaking, she jumped over him and ran after the line of girls.

            “Oh, god,” Harrison said. “That hurt.” He turned to Jack and said, “The show’s starting. What should we do?”

            Jack watched Danny rolling slowly across the ground. His shirt was stretched at the neck and his hands were at his crotch, his eyes closed.

            Shelly, kneeling in the grass, surveyed the earth-pressed snow cone and sandwich. Empty plate in hand, she crouched and began sifting the various parts of the food from the grass. She looked over at Jack and shook her head slowly.

            Jack gazed after the receding mob chasing his brother down the lane toward the antique village, all bare legs and arms pumping down the gravel in the shimmering heat and the lone figure in the white t-shirt far ahead.

            “There’s nothing left to do now,” Jack said. “I have to eat. The show will go on like it always does.”

END

No Souvenirs

            I remember the phone booth like I remember that day. It was an old rectangular box of faded Plexiglas and metal standing on the sidewalk outside of Pizza Beat. I put in the coin, pressed out Barbara’s number – and hung up.

            The bat-sized butterflies which flew and beat about my stomach every time I thought of calling her or Brian dropped into a dull flutter and I stepped out of the booth and lighted a cigarette.

            A cool March breeze blew down the sidewalk and sent a McDonald’s plastic cup bouncing past my feet. I took a drag on the cigarette, looked out at the parking lot.  They were my best friends, both of them, so why couldn’t I just pick up the phone and make things right?

            I glanced at the phone booth, tossed my cigarette away, and went back in, sliding the door behind me. I listened to the ring and felt the butterflies zoom into overdrive.

            “Hello?”

            “Hey, Barbara. It’s Jack.”

            “Jack.”

            “How you doing?”

            “All right. You know.” She sounded tired. “Wow. It’s strange hearing your voice again. Guess I should’ve expected it though. Maybe I have.”

            “Sure. I’ll always turn up again, you know that.”

            “Yeah,” she said. “I guess I don’t have to ask why you’re calling. It’s the Brian thing. I mean, why else?”

            I was smiling and looking out through the Plexiglas across the parking lot. A small white car had just pulled out of a spot and was moving away as a large, black Cadillac crawled up and began nosing into the space.

            “No,” I said. “What’d he do now?” And that terrible resentment and exclusion that gripped me at the party in December rose up hard and hot inside me.

            She didn’t say anything. I actually looked down at the phone like there was something wrong with it.

            “Barbara?”

            “Jack,” she said. “Jesus, Jack.”

            Her voice was strained, whispery. It made me feel tight and uneasy.

            “Jack, he’s dead. He killed himself.”

            I was looking out at the black Cadillac nosing into the parking space for the second time. It couldn’t fit. It was like for a moment time stopped and I saw that Cadillac forever trying to fit into that too small space and my palm sweating with the receiver tight to my ear and the windshields of all the cars bright blazing white in the afternoon sun.

            “He killed himself?” I heard myself saying. And time began again.

            “God, Jack. You didn’t know?”

            “How would I know? We’ve gone awhile without calling each other, Barbara, but, Jesus Christ, you couldn’t call me about this?”

            “I thought you knew.”

            “How the hell would I know if you didn’t call me? Jesus. We were friends.”

            “I’m sorry.”

            I found myself smoking a cigarette with no memory of having ever taken one out.

            “What happened? Why’d he do it?”

            “How should I know?” she said. “He drove his car to the Mount Carmel cemetery one night.  He had some hose, like pool hose or something. He -” she sighed. “He put the hose on his tail pipe and ran it through the window. Had all the cracks sealed up. He gassed himself. Just -” she was crying now. I could hear the little hitch in her voice. “Just checked out, Jack. Just like that.”

            “When?”

            “Two – three weeks ago. February something.”

            “I can’t believe this.”

            “It was – it really was horrible.”

            “I’m sorry, Barbara.”

            “I know. I’m sorry too. I’m sorry – I didn’t call you.”

            “Yeah, yeah. I know. It’s all right.”

            “It’s not. I was wrong not to call you. I don’t know why – I just -”

            I breathed out a long stream of smoke and leaned back in the booth. I remember the cool of the Plexiglas against the back of my head. She said nothing and I could think of nothing to say. I stared out at the cars in the parking lot.

            “So,” she said. “How’s school? What’s going on there?”

            “I’m here, Barbara,” I said. “I’m in town. It’s spring break, for Christ sake. You should at least remember that.”

            “Sorry, Jack,” she said, with definite bite. “I guess I’ve had other things on my mind.”

            “Sorry.”

            “So, where are you?” she asked, after a pause. “You close?”

            “I’m down at Central Plaza. Outside Pizza Beat. I was gonna stop by your place but you know how Brian always says -“

            The words died in my throat.

            “How he always said,” I tried to continue but the words kept falling dead on my tongue. “How he’d say `Sometimes when you give a surprise, you get a surprise.”

            “I know,” she said. “Should’ve been his epitaph. Said it enough.”

            “Yeah. And never in the good way.”

            “Prophetic, huh?”

            “I guess.”

            “Look,” she said. “I’ll be down in, like, fifteen minutes. That okay?”

            “Fine.”

            “Don’t go anywhere.”

            “Yeah,” I said, and hung up.

            I held onto that receiver like it was my anchor on the edge of a cliff. I didn’t want to leave the booth. I felt as though I’d stepped into that rectangular box a lifetime ago, that it was the only home I’d ever known.

            They both came from this same city but never met till they went an hour away to college. Brian Durham showed up as my roommate and Barbara Lauren our neighbor down the hall in the dorm. We’d both had it bad for Barbara since the night we met and she knew it.

            And that’s why I’d gotten so nuts at their farewell party when Barbara let it slip that she and Brian had slept together. I was already pissed he was graduating early and she was taking the semester off at home. The sex thing had just flipped the `asshole on’ switch in my head.  I’d wanted to call and apologize so many times since then but I thought they’d just hang up on me.

            Now Brian was gone. I wouldn’t be seeing him today. I’d never see him again. My stomach tightened into a hollow little knot and then heaved up. My lungs couldn’t find enough air. He killed himself. I felt like crying and screaming and running and pounding something with my fists all at the same time. I could do nothing, though. I gazed through the dull Plexiglas as cars crept past slowly searching for open spaces.

            When I finally saw her bopping across the parking lot it was just like always. My heart went light and bright watching her cross the asphalt. She was wearing her brown leather jacket and a black T-shirt, black leggings and knee-high brown leather boots. Her hair, auburn and brushed back, fell about her shoulders. Looking at her I imagined our conversation never took place. I expected Brian to come dancing up behind and goose her like he sometimes would.

            “What are you doing still in there?” she asked. “You could’ve gone in, you know.”

            “I know,” I said, stepping out of the booth.

            “So what’s -? What’re you doing waiting in a phone booth?”

            “I was making a call, okay? I had some other calls to make.”

            “Who else you know around here?”

            “Nobody, all right? I don’t know why I was in the booth. All right?”

            “Jesus, Jack. If you’re gonna be all pissy I’m going home. I don’t need it.”

            “You don’t need it. You don’t need it? You just tell me Brian killed himself and – what? I’m supposed to meet you with champagne singing `Oh Happy Day?’ And then you gotta make some big deal out of me standing in a phone booth, for Christ sakes. Like no one ever stood in a phone booth before.”

            “All right, all right. I’m sorry. Man. Stand in the phone booth all damn day if you want.”

            She turned away from me and shrugged her shoulders like she always did when she was angry.

            I really wanted to smack her in the head as she stood there, right in the back of the head. Whack! There! That’s for not calling me, you stupid bitch! Whack!

            But instead I walked up and put my arm around her shoulder and she turned to me, pressed her face into my chest and her arms encircled me as I held her.

            “Come on,” I said.

            We walked in out of the light into the long, dim room of Pizza Beat. The box was playing “Old Time Rock & Roll” by Seeger and many customers voices merged in a low hum. We got a booth in the back under one of the fake stained-glass lamps and sat down. The table was sticky.

            “Oh,” she said, slipping off her jacket. “Before I forget.”

            She reached into her jacket pocket and took out a small ceramic egg. She put it on the table between us. I picked it up. Small and delicate, it was dark blue with a white unicorn rearing up beneath a full, golden, moon.

            “This is beautiful,” I said. “God, Barbara. This is your talent. Forget school.”

            “Yeah, that’s what Mom said, too. She’s pushing me to check out this artist’s co-op out west. I don’t know. But, hey, I made it for you. For Easter. For a peace offering maybe,” she smiled weakly and shrugged. “Didn’t know how I was going to get it to you in one piece.”  

            “Thanks,” I said. I placed it next to the metal napkin dispenser at the side of the table.

            “It’s like a little centerpiece,” she said.

            I nodded and smiled at her. I got a coffee and she had tea. We sat looking stupidly down at the little egg on the table between us.

            “It’s really cool, Barbara,” I said.

            She sipped her tea. “Thanks. I knew you’d like it.”

            “I love it,” I said.

            We looked at each other across the fake wood of the table top. I placed my hands on either side of my coffee mug and said, “Look, I know it’s all weird now but, before anything else gets said, I just want to tell you how sorry I am about -“

            “Feels strange, doesn’t it?” she asked.

            “What?”

            “Feels strange,” she said, looking down into her tea. “Him not here.”

            “Yeah.”

            “We’ve never been out without him before. Since the night we met it’s always been the three of us.”

            “Well,” I said. “Not always. That’s what I wanted to say. Why I came here today. I wanted to tell you – tell you both – how sorry I am about the party. How I acted.”

            “Oh yeah, sure. That’s fine. It’s all different now, right? I mean,” she shrugged. “Like, forget it.”

            I thought she was going to start crying but she kept looking down into her tea and sighed. She straightened her shoulders, looked up at me, and tried to smile.

            I looked into her eyes and she looked back. The table vanished and I saw that between us there would now always be that ghost sitting in the dark cemetery with the engine propelling him from time to eternity.

            “You know, Jack,” she said. “Last time I talked to him he said I should hook up with you.”

            “He – what?”

            “He did. He said -“

            “Brian would never have said that.”

            “Hey, I know what he said. All right?”

            I sat back in the booth and looked at her.

            “Okay,” I said.

            “He said we’d be good together. You and me. Like a real couple, you know?

            “That’s what he said, huh?”

            “Yeah.”

            “All right. So?”

            “So – I’m just saying.”

            “What? Saying what? We’re supposed to go out? Screw? Marry? What does `hook up’ mean?”

            “Whatever you want it to mean, I guess.”

            “Why are you saying this to me?”

            “Brian said -“

            “You’re the keeper of his last words now? Is that your new role? And now we’re supposed to fulfill his dying wish? Am I getting this right?”

            “What’s wrong with you? I know you always wanted to. I did too but -“

            “But that’d have ruined us – the three of us. You couldn’t choose one without the other getting left out. So you kept us balanced. So fine. Nice work on your part. Oh, wait. Except for that time you fucked him. That’s right. So you’re saying it’s my turn now?”

            “Don’t you talk that way to me, Jack Hunter. You don’t know what it’s been like here.”

            “No, I don’t. And I have you to thank for that. If you’d picked up the god damn phone and called me then maybe I would know. Maybe you wouldn’t have gone through all this alone. Maybe I could’ve – done something. Jesus Christ, Barbara, all you had to do was pick up the fucking phone.”

            Everyone was looking at us and I felt stupid for yelling. Barbara was crying, looking down at the table top.

            “Barbara -”

            She grabbed her jacket and whipped herself out of the booth, down the room and out the door as I jumped up. I pulled out some cash from my pocket, don’t even know how much, tossed it on the table top, and turned to follow her out. And then I paused. What was I going to say now? What was I going to do? Was there anything to do? I looked around the wide room of Pizza Beat, the booths with all the people sitting eating lunch, the waitresses moving between the tables with their trays of dishes and wide silver platters, the box playing some song by Sting. It was all so normal. It was impossible all this could be going on while I was feeling what I felt then. It was impossible anyone could exist and then just decide not to exist anymore and the world could continue like always and people could still sit and eat pizza and listen to the stupid box playing its stupid songs like nothing had happened. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

            She stood on the sidewalk by the phone booth slowly pulling on her jacket. I paused just outside the door and looked at her. She looked like she’d shrunk. All I could think of was a balloon losing air. I walked up and stood next to her, looking out across the parking lot at the cars.

            “I’m sorry I yelled, Barbara.”

            “I know.”

            I didn’t know what else to say. Words had no meaning.

            “I’m just so angry,” I said. “Why didn’t he call me or – or something?”

            I shook my head, feeling the tears coming and my face tightening. Barbara stood beside me staring out at the lot, tight lipped and silent. I sighed.

            “I think maybe I’ll go,” I said. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

            “Yeah, that’s okay.”

            She wiped at her face with her palm.

            “I’ll call you later, okay?” I said. “You okay?”

            “I’m fine,” she said.

            I stepped off the curb and started for my car. Inside my chest I felt sharp silver blades turning, buzzing, cutting, burning, and my skull felt on fire.  I jangled my car keys in my pocket and was going to pull out my cigarettes when she screamed.

            It wasn’t really a scream at all. It was a shriek. It was a howl that split the air. I whirled around and she was standing by the phone booth, fists clenched on either side of her face, tears running down her cheeks.

            “Barbara.”

            “Don’t call me! Don’t call me!”

            I stood still on the asphalt before the sidewalk looking at her.

            “Don’t call me ever again! I don’t want to hear you! I don’t want to see you again!”

            She buried her face in her hands as I reached out to her.

            “Barbara -“

            “Don’t touch me!” she screamed. “Don’t you touch me! Don’t talk to me!”

            “Barbara, I -“

            “You don’t know. You don’t know. I didn’t call you because I couldn’t. I couldn’t. We were hanging out one night and I said we should call you up, get things straightened out, but he said no, how you wouldn’t talk to us anymore, that you were through with us now. But I didn’t believe that about you. I don’t think he really did either, he was just hurt by you that night of the party, but we got in a fight about it anyway and it was a bad fight. It was a real bad fight. And I said things that I can’t take back. And I can never take them back now. And that was the last time I saw him. That was the last time. And then he was dead. I couldn’t call you.”

            I pulled her into my arms and held her tightly until she was still. People passed by on the sidewalk and I felt embarrassed and then small and petty for feeling that way. I smoothed her hair with my palm.

            “Shh,” I whispered. “It’s okay.”

            She pushed back away from me and wiped her face with her fingers.

            “Nothing’s okay.”

            “Barbara, it wasn’t your fault. Who knows why he did it but it wasn’t -“

            “I’m not saying it was my fault. I don’t feel that. God. You don’t see anything.”

            “I’m sorry.”

            “I’m so sick of that word. I never want to hear that word again.”

            “I – don’t know what you want me to say here.”

            “Go home, Jack.”

            “Barbara -“

            “Leave me alone. I mean it.”

            “I can’t leave you like this.”

            She turned and looked into my face.

            “If you don’t leave me alone, I’m gonna scream so fucking loud every cop in the city’s gonna be here in a heartbeat and, believe me, the way I’m feeling now, I’ll press charges. Nobody tells me I’ve ever `fucked’ anyone, Jack Hunter. That’s not what happened with me and Brian and you know it. And you knew it that night, too. Now – go.”

            I looked at her, nodded, and walked away. My head felt tight. I got into my car, hands shaking, lit a cigarette, and pulled out. She was standing there on the sidewalk beside the phone booth watching me as I passed – and I looked back at her for a moment – and that was the last time I saw Barbara Lauren.

            I called her a week later, when I was back at school, and her mom said she’d gone out west to that artist’s colony but she wouldn’t tell me where. She changed the subject and asked how I’d liked that ceramic egg Barbara had been working on so long for me. I’d forgotten all about it. It was probably in pieces in a dumpster somewhere. No souvenirs. Just hanging on the phone there, not knowing what to tell her mom.

End

100 Years

            There are some questions which cannot be asked, nor answered, unless you’re talking with an old friend – that `friend of youth’, that person who knew you before you came to know yourself.

            And there are some memories which can sleep forever until those questions are asked.

            You need the old friend, the familiar face and voice, to steer the raft of your mind into the proper channels to glimpse that shoreline you’ve forgotten you ever saw.

            The questions won’t change who you are. Not usually. But they’ll remind you of who you were, of that person with your same name that now no longer exists, and what changed him.

            And just the other day, sitting out here on the back porch with my college friend, Rollo White, sipping the after-dinner coffee, he breathed out a question I’d never considered when he said, “In which decade do you feel you grew up?”

            “What’s that mean?”

            “Well, what it says. Which decade do you feel `defines’ you? Everyone bears the stamp of that decade in which they grew up. People who lived through the Great Depression, say, or those who were young in the `60’s.”

            “Oh, I get it,” I said, nodding. “I don’t know. The `80’s?”

            Settling back in his chair with his coffee, Rollo said, “I do not think so. We were at Sanford in `84. You were already formed, or mal-formed, depending on point of view.”

            “You’re hilarious.”

            “To answer the question, you need to ask yourself such things as `In what year did I first take a car ride with friends, no parents involved’ or `In what year did I first kiss a girl I knew I loved’.” Sitting forward and slow dancing his coffee mug before his face, he said, “Or `When did I take my first drink of beer – and like it’.”

            I nodded, shrugged and said, “Ok, the `70’s, then?”

            “Better answer. What you want to do, you see, is try to find a pivotal moment. Something which, at the time it happened, you knew, then, you would never forget.”

***

            And it’s summer of 1976, a July afternoon, sometime after one and the hot sun high in a clear blue sky. The long green fields of Veterans’ Memorial Park in Enderkill stretch out before me and I’m standing in the shade of a tall maple with my little brother, James.

            It’s the Bicentennial celebration. America is two hundred years old. Parties have been going on since Memorial Day and here we are at yet another. Pop’s working for the Journal again and he’s here covering the big event. And it’s big, all right. Tables and more tables covered in white plastic with macaroni salad and potato salad and salads I’ve never seen the like of and there are long grills going and chicken cooking and ribs and steaks, hot dogs, hamburgers. Long, silver tubs filled with ice and cans of soda, beer, jugs of lemonade and tea.

            Not twenty feet away from me some men dressed in the blue of the Continental Army move about a small cook fire in their camp. Their tents, behind them, stretch away, weathered brown triangles rising up out of the grass. Far away, it seems, on the other side of the small stream which runs through the park, are the Red Coats.

            There’s going to be a battle, right here, and me and James are so excited we don’t even move when Pop yells at us a second time to get our heads out of our butts and get on line for the food.

            “Who wants to eat anyway,” James says, shrugging, his hands stuffed into the pockets of these blue corduroys he always wears with his Adidas t-shirt. “We can eat any day of the year.”

            “I know. I know. What if they start and we’re stuck in that stupid line?”

            A tall man in a blue coat, passing by us just as I say that, smiles down at me and my brother and says, “Go on, boys. Get some grub. We won’t be getting down to any brawling for another hour yet.” He winks at us and says, softly, “We’re waiting on more reinforcements. Wouldn’t do to have General Washington’s’ army getting whipped here in front of a crowd, now would it?”

            “No, sir,” I say, shaking my head quickly as though I’m a new recruit.

            “Boys!” Pop yells. “Move your butts!”

            So we scurry across the lawn and fall in at the end of the line and plod along slowly toward the white tables. The line wasn’t so long when Pop first yelled for us but now it’s fast growing back behind James like he’s grown some crazy tail. Pop has no use for lines. He snatches a hot dog off the grill, waving it back and forth to cool it down before dropping it into a bun a lady holds out for him and people are watching and laughing. He doesn’t care if they laugh or not. You can tell just looking at him. The guy always does just what he wants – and, man, he always has such a good time doing it – and, I think suddenly, so does everyone around him.

            He’s on the move now, having finished his dog, back to work again, his little Norelco tape recorder in one hand and a cigarette burning in the other. A big guy, my father, or so he always seems to me, but as I watch him interviewing the tall soldier who winked at us, I think how, in grown-up-world, he’s probably seen as being short. He’s fifty years old here, dark hair showing small streaks of silver above his ears and his beard graying. He cocks his head to the side as he asks the soldier a question, the tape recorder raised high in his right hand.

            “Hey, mind if I cut in?” a voice says, and I turn and it’s our friend, Shelly McCall, from down the road.

            “Ladies first,” I say, gesturing.

            I’m going to be thirteen this year in December but I freely let everyone know that I am thirteen, this being, technically, my thirteenth year on earth. And, now being a teen-ager and not a little kid anymore, I’m very uptight about acting my age.

            “Why, thank you, sir,” she says, brushing her long, brown hair from her face with her hand.

            James says, “No butting in. Get to the end of the line.”

            “Sit on it,” Shelly says, waving him away.

            “Your folks here?” I ask, ignoring James. He’s still just a kid, after all, two years younger than me and Shelly.

            Shelly shrugs. “Somewhere. We were down by the stream and I took off my shoes to just dip my feet, ok? And my dad yells at me – `There’s electric eels in that water! What are you thinking! You don’t have a brain in your head!’ There’s electric eels in a stream in Enderkill, New York? Come on. And that was right after he yelled at me to put this dumb jacket back on,” she tugs at a blue sweatshirt tied around her waist. “So, I just took off for the car. I’m not gonna let him ruin another day of my life if I can help it. Didn’t know I’d run into you two, though. Glad I did.”

            I nod, having no idea what I should say to that. We’re up to the stack of cardboard plates now and the tray of white plastic forks and knives and spoons. James steps out of line and cuts in before Shelly saying, “Butters can’t be choosers.”

            “Baby.”

            “Butter.”

            “Your brother graciously invited me in.”

            “Yeah,” James says, casting that net of derision over her with his snake glance, like he always does with me. “That’s just because you got things making bumps in your shirt and I don’t.”

            I blush and run my hand up my face wanting, for probably the two millionth time in my life, to bury my little brother in clay up to his neck and leave him for the archaeologists to find one day.

            But Shelly puts her hands on her hips, thrusts her chest out at him, and says, “These things? You mean these things here? Well, if they get me to the food faster, then at least they’re good for something.”

            And James is actually speechless. The kid’s blushing now. He fumbles with a cardboard plate, drops it on the grass, kicks it under the table and snatches another up, grabs a handful of utensils with not a fork among them.

            Shelly’s laughing, her brown eyes sparkling, as James is moving forward, head down, as quickly as the line will allow. She turns so that now we’re side by side moving along the table. She’s wearing this white t-shirt with `Spirit of `76’ on it and bell-bottoms with red flowers embroidered up the sides and that blue sweatshirt tied around her waist and she’s bare foot and she’s so pretty that I feel sort of jittery inside and weird because, I guess, I’ve known her since the days of girls-are-icky and I’m not quite sure what to do now that they’re not and why did the moron have to go and call attention to the girl’s boobs for?

            “Don’t mind James,” I say, only because I feel like I have to say something. “He’s just a -“

            “Oh, I never mind James,” she says, picking up a plastic fork at the same time I do and our hands touch. She smiles at me sideways and says, “But – did you just let me into line cause of – these things?”

            “I – uh – no. I – wasn’t even all that aware of – uh – your – uh – things – there.”

            And I make this mistake, when I say things of gesturing to her right one with this plastic fork in my hand and stabbing it.

            “Ow!” She drops her plate and fork, her hand on her breast.

            “Geez! Sorry. Oh, I’m -”

            I start to bend down to at least pick up her plate for her but she moves at the same time and we crack heads together.

            “Jack!” she says.

            “Ow!”

            “God, Jack, will you watch it?”

            “Sorry.”

            “God.”

            “Sorry, sorry.”

            “Now just – just stand still. Stay right where you are.”

            She bends down and scoops up her plate and fork and I see James, standing with one hand on his hip, smiling and shaking his head. He squints at me, a tight smile crossing his face, and holds up his fingers in the OK sign.

            “Oh, shut up,” I say.

            Shelly stands up, looks at me a moment, unsmiling, and moves up the table toward where James is loading his plate with macaroni salad.

            “Sorry, Shel,” I say. “Really.”

            She looks at me and shakes her head. “I never would’ve thought those things were so sharp.”

            Waiting for James the glutton to finish mounding his plate, she moves her hand up to her right breast and rubs at it slowly. And I can’t help but watch that hand in action – which, turning suddenly, she sees me doing. I try to switch my gaze to her shoulder but it’s too late. She grins at me and says, “As my dad would say, are you thinking impure thoughts?”

            “What? No. I was just – I was – only -“

            “Yeah,” she says. “You were `only’. What? You stab me just to get a feel?”

            “No. I – come on, Shelly. You -“

            James says, “Oh, man, look at you. Is that sunburn or are you turning into a beet?”

            “Shut up, will ya?”

            Shelly laughs, tossing her hair over her shoulder.

            I feel hot and uncomfortable. Shelly’s saying something to James and the line’s moving steadily. I wish they’d both go away now. They’re annoying me. When I get to the end of the line and my plate is heavy with assorted salads, a hunk of blackened chicken, and some strips of steak, I pull a Coke out of water thick with ice chunks and find a place to sit by myself. Shelly and James are over in the shade of the tree – where everyone with a brain is sitting – but I’m worked into a grump now and I park myself on a little rise in back of the Continental Army, in the sun.

            I’m gazing leisurely about, eating some potato salad, trying to ignore Shelly who’s standing under the tree and waving to me. Then she yells, “Jack! What are you sitting out in the sun for? Get over here!”

            And now I really feel like an idiot as I hoist myself up and try to look cool and deliberate as I walk toward them.

            “What were you doing over there?” she asks.

            “I – uh – didn’t know where you were.”

            “What are you, blind?” James asks. “Like – Duh!”

            I sit down, not saying anything, and start eating. Shelly and James are talking.

            Shelly, sitting on her sweatshirt, picks up what she was saying to James, “Well, isn’t that just nuts? He always does that, too. `That flag these guys have here isn’t historically accurate. Washington’s men, that is.’ Like he’s some expert.”

            “Maybe he is,” James says. “Maybe he was – there.”

            She smiles and says, “Oh, you know him. He always thinks he knows everything but he’s just full of crap. All show. He’s nothing like your dad. Your dad really does know everything.”

            “Didn’t know KISS was coming to the Civic Center,” I say. “Sure didn’t know that.”

            James says, “Oh, give it up. You could’ve just bought the tickets, you know.”

            “I can’t afford that. Two tickets, man, that’s fifteen bucks.”    

            “Give it up.”

            “What’s up?” Shelly asked.

            “Jack’s twisted and bent over that KISS concert. You know – how Pop always gets tickets free? Well, he missed this time and now Jack’s all twisted and bent over it.”

            “I can’t get into them,” Shelly says. “Well, except for `Beth’.”

            “Yeah, well, everyone likes `Beth’,” I say.

            “Not me,” James says, trying again to stab a piece of macaroni with his plastic knife. “Everything those guys do sucks.”

            “Oh, yeah,” I say, nodding. “Mister Music Expert. A guy who listens to the Bay City Rollers.”

            “Me and plenty of others, pal. And – wait – didn’t I see you at that concert, too?”

            “Hey, only because it was a concert and it was free. God. He got those tickets.”

            “Just give it up.”

            Shelly asks him, “Do girls really throw their underwear at them?”

            “Yup,” James says, nodding and chewing. “Yank their things right off and toss `em at the stage.”

            “Really?”

            “Yeah,” I say. “We were in the front row and it was like it was raining bras at one point.” Then I realize I’m talking to someone who wears a bra and  I get all flustered that I used the word and then I think how she’ll think I was looking at these girls’ boobs who were tossing the bras and I quickly say, “But, but, but I didn’t see anything. You know. We – we were in the front row and all and I didn’t, you know, see anything, like – uh – breast-like or anything.”

            “Breast like? What is wrong with you?” James asks, doing his eye-squint again. “You are such a case.”

            Shelly grins at me and goes on eating her salad. She swallows and then says, “Sounds like quite a show.”

            James smiles and, says, “It sure was.”

            The guy’s such a moron. Sitting there trying to eat salad without a fork until he finally gives up and, raising the plate, uses his knife as a shovel.

            “And you think I’m a case?”

            “You are,” he says, his mouth full, chewing. He takes a drink of soda and then says, “Man, a girl can just ask you what time it is and you turn purple.”

            “I do not.”

            Shelly looks over at me and says, “You’re sort of going purple now, actually.”

            “Oh, the both of you shut up.”

            They’re annoying but I can’t really argue with them. I do go purple. Can’t deny it. I am a case. So I shrug and let my annoyance go as I grin over at them.

            “Old Jack,” Shelly says, smiling.

            After we finish eating, we all dig another soda from the ice-choked water. There are men standing around the tin beer trough with cans of Schaeffer and Budweiser in their hands, all in t-shirts and jeans or shorts, all smoking cigarettes and talking about President Ford.

            We wander around the park awhile, looking at the soldiers.

            Shelly says, “God, those poor guys. They’ve gotta be roasting in those outfits, you know? I mean, I’m roasting and I’ve got, like, nothing on compared.”

            Shelly, holding the neck of her t-shirt, begins pulling it, fanning herself. I try quickly to look anywhere other than where my eyes want to go and give myself a cramp.

            “Hey, there’s your folks,” I say, rubbing the side of my neck.

            She turns and looks to where Mr. and Mrs. McCall slouch like wilted dandelions, pressed down by the full sun, at the end of the now-interminable chain-smoking food line.

            “Whoa,” James says. “Look at that line. Good we ate when we did.”

            I nod, looking at the people standing in the line – the white shirts and blue shorts, all the cigarettes burning, the red-white-and-blue slacks and caps, the kids running between the slow-meandering stretch of adults.

            “I think your folks will maybe be eating sometime around six.”

            “Good,” Shelly says. “That’ll keep `em out of my hair.”

            James says, “Don’t they even want to know where you are? Shouldn’t you – wave at them or something?”

            Looking away, Shelly says, “Nah. Best thing’s not to get their attention. They’ll only find something I’m doing wrong. I swear, I can be just sitting in a chair reading a book and it’s like I’m turning the pages too loud for him or I’m not turning them fast enough or he doesn’t approve of the cover and, the worst, it’s not a `Good Christian book’. Like he can tell that from the cover. Like he can tell anything.”

            Listening to her, I think how strange it must be, growing up in a house like that with parents who are that way. Me and James and Karen, my older sister, don’t have lives anything like that. So, ok, Pop didn’t get the tickets to the KISS concert but I can honestly say that that’s the worst thing he’s probably done to me and, even though that was a pretty bad thing, he didn’t do it on purpose.

            Shelly’s saying, “…out of the house.”

            “What? Sorry.”

            “I said, if he’d known I was wearing this t-shirt he wouldn’t have let me out of the house. I had this jacket on at the parade this morning, see? And when we got here I took it off. Well, it was sure hot enough. We were all roasting. But he screams at me like I’m running around naked or something. Said to put that jacket back on or I was gonna have to sit in the car all afternoon. So I put it on and roasted my butt off. I mean, anyone with eyes can see every girl in this park has less on than me. I think half the ladies here aren’t even wearing bras. Five more years, boys, and I’m out of that house.”

            “Where you going?” James asks.

            “Wherever they are not,” she says, looking away at the high blue sky.

            I watch my sneakers moving over the grass, feeling suddenly strange that someone my own age can feel this way about her parents, that she’s counting down the years until she can get away from them. I understand it, of course, but it makes me feel so sad. Except for when I was little and used to play run-away-to-Shelly’s-house, I’ve never thought of escaping from my parents – and that, after all, was just a game. It was one time playing that game, in fact, that I first found out how creepy her dad could be.

            I suddenly wonder, glancing away, how she’s felt getting off the school bus in the afternoon all these years, starting up her walk to her front door. I’ve always felt safe coming home – but how could she? I’ve known for a long time now that life isn’t as Norman Rockwell at her place as her parents want everyone to think – but I’ve never thought about the simple things I take for granted around my house which, I suddenly realize, are big things – like being able to read what I want and dress how I like and do what I enjoy doing. And I think how Pop would never have a problem with Karen wearing what Shel’s got on and how he sure wouldn’t think of wrecking a day over it and – what makes people who want to control other people want to do it? Doesn’t seem to make life any nicer.

            I’m looking down at my sneakers, thinking these things, and thinking how I’ve never thought them before, when James says, “Look. The Red Coats are lining up.”

            “Quick,” Shelly says. “Up that hill. That’s a great spot to watch from.”

            “Are you nuts?” James says. “We’ll be right in the middle of the battle field.”

            “Yeah,” I say. “We’ll get stomped on or – or something.”

            “So? You want to see it, right? You think you’re gonna see anything back there?”

            She points and we turn to where everyone is now ringing the field, five-people deep, and when we turn back, shrugging at each other, Shelly’s already on her way up the hill – so we follow her.

            The British are in formation now in the far field and the Blue Coats form up as well. The high song of the fifes and the roll and sharp snap of the drums fill the air and the mass of men in blue start forward and the lines of men in red move, as one, to meet them.

            Both armies advance until they are within forty paces of each other, facing one another across the small dip of the stream.

            And the fife and the drum are silent now.

            And there seems no sound at all. Not even a bird song.

            And no one speaks until an officer of the Continentals calls out the command to present arms and discharge the weapons and then it’s all gun shots and smoke and a line of Red Coats falls to the ground and then the British return fire and the Blue Coats pitch forward on the bank of the stream. And suddenly all the air is cries and shouts and guns going off and there’s smoke all around.       

            Atop our hill, we’re maybe a hundred feet away from the battle and it looks so real I feel a little afraid. The rebel army fords the stream under a hail of gunfire and tries to break the British lines, but the lines hold, and still hold, and then suddenly there’s a break and they’re divided and begin to scatter. And now instead of one battle being fought in one place there are small skirmishes going on all over the field. I’m so busy watching this one across the stream that I don’t realize some men are running past us until they’re almost on us.

            We jump up and quickly back as two Red Coats race by, followed by three men in blue who raise their muskets and fire – and the British soldiers drop down on the grass.

            Shelly jumps when the guns go off, so close to us, and grabs my hand. Looking over at her, I squeeze her fingers and say, “You okay?”

            “Yeah,” she says. “Just startled.”

            Watching the three men in blue run back toward the battle, I’m swept up again in the action – until I realize I’m still holding Shelly’s hand. It’s hot and my palm is sweating. I’m becoming more aware of that hand than the battle raging before us. I shift my arm – but her hand remains in mine – until she pulls it away and wipes her palm on her jeans. I’m glad she did. I really had no idea what to do with it or how long I was supposed to hold it.

            The air is filled with clouds of smoke and, across the stream, in the far field, the Red Coats begin to run and the Continental army raises their muskets and start cheering before they run after them and, as we watch, the standard bearer of the British colors falls and a man in a blue coat captures their flag and waves the army on in pursuit.

            And all the onlookers begin clapping and cheering and whistling and I look over at the crowd of faces, all jubilant and victorious.

            Shelly, shaking her head, says, “What are they all so happy about? That all these people were killed? I mean, what a stupid waste.”

            James says, “I thought it was cool.” He gestures to the two British soldiers lying on the ground a few feet away from us and says, “Especially when they dropped those guys so close and all. That was really cool.”

            Shelly says, “Yeah, it was a good show, don’t get me wrong, but, God, how dumb. I mean, who came up with wars anyway? Guys with guns standing across from each other and shooting. Can you get more dumb than that? And that’s the world we’re in. Where we all show up to watch a show where `our’ people kill `their’ people and then we’re all supposed to stand around and cheer `cause the `right’ people got killed. Can it get any dumber than that?”

            I say, “Never thought about it that way. I kind of thought it was pretty neat, myself but when you put it that way…”

            Shelly brushes the hair from her face and says, “Oh, never mind. It was cool. I did really like it. It was neat. It just – made me – think about things is all. I mean, we’re all in this big hurry to grow up and get into the world and – what for? For this?”

            She gestures with both hands to the cheering crowd, drops her arms to her sides, shaking her head.

            I honestly don’t know what she’s talking about so I just shrug. It’s times like this I wish I smoked cigarettes so I could do something besides shrugging and feeling dumb. That seems to me the thing with smoking cigarettes – it’s what you do when you can’t think of anything else to do. 

            Then there’s this sharp `whack’ on my back so I almost fall over and Pop’s there saying, “Wasn’t that something?”

            “Hey, Mr. Hunter.”

            “Shelly. How’d you like the show?”

            “Great. It was real – interesting.”

            “Was that something or what?” Pop says.

            I look up at him, this guy who seems so large to me. Pop. My father. Always having such a good time. Look at those eyes – bright brown, alive with delight, like a little kid seeing his first Christmas tree. He looks out across the field still strewn with fallen soldiers and says, “Felt like I was there. Like I was right there. I thought I had a pretty damn good spot, too. But when I saw you three up here, I could tell who had the best seats in the house.”

            Shelly smiles at me and I smile back and shrug. “Ok, ok. So it was a good idea.”

            James says, “Man, I wish they’d all get up and do it again. That was so cool.”

            “It was great.”

            Shelly says, “It was pretty exciting, I’ll say that.”

            “I’m glad to see you three appreciated it,” Pop says, as he gazes across the field. “It may not seem a big deal to you, but you’re part of history here. The Bicentennial.” He looks out at the field, his brown eyes shining, sunglasses up on his head, and seems to look at each person in the park like he’s memorizing their faces. “When the next big party comes, the Tri-centennial, there won’t be one person here today still living. Most likely. Think of that. Hundred years isn’t that long a time, you look at it a certain way. But there won’t be one person here today that’ll be around then.”

            He shakes his head slowly, a faint smile playing around his lips, and then says, “So I’m glad you liked it. Only comes once. A day like today.”

            I’m looking at all the bodies lying on the green grass and then over to the milling crowd of spectators and the thought is absolutely staggering to me that all these people are going to die.         Of course, I know people die. In theory, I mean. I’ve been told that. But this is incredible – looking on all these faces and hands – this shirt and that pair of jeans right there and the men at the beer trough talking about President Ford and all these people here are going to die and I am here also and that means I, too, will die and so will Shelly and so will James – and so will Pop – and there we’ll be, more still than any of these fallen soldiers.

            And it suddenly occurs to me what Shelly said, `For what?’ And I still don’t understand what she was talking about but I feel I’m a little closer somehow and I look at my father and put my hand up on his shoulder and say, “Yeah, it was great. Thanks for bringing us, Pop. It was a great time.”

            James, still staring out at the battlefield, says, “It was just – so cool.” Then he says, “Whew. Wow. I’m gonna get a Coke.”

            And he starts off toward the troughs.

            “Yeah,” I call after him. “Thanks for asking. Bring us back some, too.”

            He turns and I know he’s gonna flip me the finger – but Pop’s standing there so he just does one of his dismissive waves and walks on.

            “Well,” Pop says. “I’m gonna find myself some shade and a cool drink.” He turns to go and then says to Shelly, “You staying for the fireworks?”

            She shrugs. “Don’t know. I don’t know what my parents are into.”

            “You want,” he says. “We’ll drive you home if they don’t want to stick around.”

            “Thanks.”

            And now I’m sitting alone with Shelly on the small hill and, in the far field, a bugle begins to blow and all the dead men stand up, brush the dirt and grass off their costumes, and start walking back to their camps.

            “Ok,” Shelly says. “All right. Now that’s cool. That’s the way wars should really be fought. You get back up and go home to your camp at night and eat marshmallows. Ok. Now this I can really appreciate. Nobody gets killed.”

            “Right,” I say. “That’d be good. Nobody dies.”

            My mouth is dry, probably from breathing in the cloud of musket smoke mingled with the hundreds of cigarettes burning in the park today, and I look to see if James is coming back any time this century with the soda.

            Shelly sighs and says, “But it’s like your dad said – there probably won’t be anyone here today that’s still alive in a hundred years. In real life, people don’t get back up, do they?”

            “Yeah. I was thinking of that, too. But, you know, a hundred years is kind of long.”

            “Yeah.”

            “Well, even before, when you were saying how it’s just five years until you leave home. I thought, well, five years is a pretty long time. I mean, it’s a short time but, but at the same time it’s long.”

            “Yeah.”

            “A lot can happen in five years.”

            “A lot can happen in one.”

            “Sure. Sure, it can.”

            “But a year goes so fast,” Shelly says. “Like this summer. It’s already July. We’ll be back at school before you know it and another summer done. You remember when we were kids and summer lasted forever?”

            I nod. “Pop told me once that life starts going faster as you get older.”

            “And we’re not even that old yet. You know? You think it’s gonna get faster than this?”

            I shrug. “May be.”

            Shelly says, “Who do you think will die first, you or me?”

            “I don’t know. What kind of question is that? I don’t know.”

            “Well, who do you think?”

            “How can I – even answer that?”

            And then a voice shouts, “Shelly!”

            And we look up and it’s her dad advancing on us, arms swinging.

            “What do you think you’re doing, young lady?”

            “Talking to Jack,” she says, shrugging.

            “I don’t like that t-shirt. I told you that.”

            “Dad – please can we -“

            “We were looking for you. Didn’t you hear us calling?”

            “Dad? There was a really big battle here? My ears are still ringing. And I think if Mr. Hunter could see me up here on the only hill in the park, you and mom shouldn’t have had too much of a problem.”

            He seems about to say something and, from the look on his face, it’s nothing too pleasant. He wipes at his forehead, and says, “We’re going. Now. Get up. Hello, Jack.”

            “Mr. McCall.”

            “Mr. Hunter said he’d drive me home. I’d like to stay and watch the fireworks.”

            “Oh, no, Missy. I don’t think so. We’ll be coming back as a family to watch those fireworks. That’s not till almost nine.”

            “But, Dad, what am I going to be doing at home today? Nothing, right? Trying to keep out of your hair. So – what’s the big deal? It’s not like I’m here with strangers or something.”

            “I said `no’. Now let’s go.”

            I raise my hand and say, “Mr. McCall? My dad really -“

            “Yeah,” Shelly says. “Could you just talk to Mr. Hunter? He said -“

            “I don’t care what he said. I don’t care what you’re saying. And the only thing you’ve got to care about is what I’m saying now – and I’m telling you to move your little keister to the car.”

            He folds his arms across his chest and, looking down at her, says, “And maybe this will teach you to dress a little more appropriately in public in the future.”

            “That’s what this is about? I gotta go home because you don’t like what I’m wearing?”

            “You’re going home because I said so.”

            “What if – what if I put the jacket back on?”

            “You are coming home because I said so. That’s it.”

            “Most of the girls here are wearing less than me!”

            “I don’t care what most of the girls here are wearing. You do as I say and no back talk or you know good and well what’s waiting for you at home.”

            She glares up at him and he glares back.

            “Say good-bye and get moving,” he says, quietly, then turns and starts away.

            Shelly looks over at me, her eyes shining wetly, and says, “Just promise me this – that if I die before you and that son of a bitch is still around, he can’t come to my funeral. Because I said so.”

            “Sorry, Shelly.”

            She looks down at the ground, her jaw tight, and says, “He makes every day something I regret.”

            She seems then to spring forward off the ground and strides away following her fathers’ white shirt toward the crowd and I watch her go and my heart feels heavy inside my chest and I know this is a day I will never forget and I also know that I don’t know why.

***

            But all these years later, sitting on the back porch of this house I own, a husband and father now myself, I do.

            I didn’t have to wait a hundred years for the people who were there that day in the park to begin dying. My father died in 1987, Mr. McCall in `89 – and Shelly McCall in `96. Me and James went out and visited her at her place in Seattle to say good-bye before the cancer took her out.

            I don’t know if I bear some defining stamp from the decade of the seventies but I do know something about pivotal moments.

            No, that July day of 1976 I had not yet ridden in a car with friends without my parents, hadn’t kissed a girl I loved, and hadn’t even tasted a beer – but it was that day, watching Shelly walk away after her father, that I realized how great a man my father was, how lucky I was to be that man’s son, and how we don’t even have a hundred years to love each other in.

End