“Driver,” said Charles Jefferson, “take me home.”
“Where do you live?”
“Belmont.”
“We're getting closer. It’s another twelve stops or so, son.”
Charles Jefferson jabbed two jacket-draped fingers into the back of the bus driver’s neck. “I want to go home. Now. To my door.”
Charles Jefferson was driven to his door by the city bus, while a busload of amazed passengers looked on. As he was getting off the bus in front of his house, Jefferson turned to the driver.
“Now that wasn’t very far out of your way, was it?”
Charles had barely set his books down, of course, when he was visited by two members of the Ridgemont Police Department. Jefferson denied the entire incident, but charges were still filed by the city bus company. He was barred from every RTD service, but that was just fine with Jefferson anyway.
The next day an office worker appeared at the door of Jefferson’s English class with an office slip. When an office worker appeared at the door it could mean anything. It could mean a telephone call, it could mean an emergency, a referral, a rich uncle who died and left you a ton of money. It could mean anything, or it could mean you.
Of all office slips, the worst was a green slip. It meant that a student was headed directly to the front office, room 409, to see Vice-Principal Ray Connors. This was serious shit. A yellow slip meant Principal Gray wanted to see you—big deal, he was retiring at the end of year—and a blue slip was a phone message. It didn’t even get you out of class.
“Okay,” said Mrs. George, the English teacher. “Oh, my goodness, it’s a green slip. Charles Jefferson, you need to go to the front office to see Mr. Connors right now. Here, take this with you.”
Jefferson rose from his seat and calmly walked the quarter mile down the halls to room 409. The halls full of white kids definitely parted when they saw him coming. He liked that. Jefferson put his head down and studied the floor tiles along the way. Light green. Dark green. Light green. Dark green.
Charles was ushered into the office of Ray Connors.
“Charles,” Connors announced, “I give up on you. I know you too well. I throw my hands up. So what we’re going to do today is take you on a little walk to meet someone new. I believe you’ve heard we have a new dean of discipline . . .”
Jefferson nodded.
“I’d like to introduce you to him.”
He led Charles Jefferson down the halls to the office of Lt. Lawrence “Larry” Flowers.
“Lieutenant Flowers . . . this is Charles Jefferson.”
There were two posters on the office wall. One was of a waterfall, with white calligraphy: “You do your thing/And I do mine/And when we meet/it’s beautiful.” The other was of a cat hanging upside down from a steel baton. It said: “Hang in There, Baby.”
And in the middle was Flowers himself. He had mellowed a bit from his first days at the school. Flowers had at first ripped into Ridgemont like a hungry dog. He sealed up the hole in the fence behind the baseball field, even tried to seal off the Point. Kids had ripped the access hole right back open with wire cutters, but the fact still remained fresh in many minds—He tried to seal up the Point.
Worse yet, Flowers had reinstated a Ridgemont policy that had gone out of practice in the sixties, presumably when students still retaliated with Molotov cocktails. Flowers had brought back The Student Parking Ticket. Student parking tickets, while not a valid city ordinance, still cost a kid money.
If you came back to your secret parking spot and saw an S.P.T. flapping on your windshield, that was still two bucks you had to hand over to Ridgemont. Lieutenant Flowers gave out 75 parking tickets in his first month at the school.
Lieutenant Flowers sat there now in front of Charles Jefferson, wearing a brown paisley shirt, brown polyester pants, and a light yellow sweater. Pinned on the sweater was the everpresent gold badge.
“Hello, Charles,” said Lt. Flowers.
Charles Jefferson nodded.
“I want you to know, Charles that I am not a disciplinarian. I’m an independent man. I don’t call parents. I just like kids coming to me, opening up and sharing what’s going on. Letting me know how I can help them. I really don’t like being known as a disciplinarian.”
Flowers got up and closed his office door.
“I feel I can be open with you,” he said. “I know about drugs, Charles, and violence and the street. I know about being black. I worked at a junior high school in Chicago for seven years. I may look mean, but I am not a mean man.”
Charles Jefferson nodded.
“I feel the bottom line with any problem student—if I may be frank—is ‘I love you.’ We all want to feel love. Very few of us, Charles, are getting as much as we want. We’re all beggars, and our cups are empty, Charles. Maybe there’s only a few coins rattling around at the bottom . . . but that is it, baby”
Charles stared straight ahead.
“Baby, you are kissing that scholarship goodbye! And for what? To get a city bus to give you a ride home? Charles, we all have restrictions and taboos keeping us from getting what we want, and it’s the same thing. We’re all human beings, alive and magnificent . . . you are a magnificent student, and ball player . . . and baby, you’re about to kiss that scholarship goodbye! Now what do you have to say to that?”
“Fuck you,” said Charles Jefferson.
High Noon at Carl’s
Brad Hamilton reported for work as usual on Monday night at Carl’s Jr. He knew instantly that something was wrong.
“Hamilton,” said Dennis Taylor, “I need to speak with you about something.”
“Yo.” Brad had been setting up his fryer.
Dennis Taylor’s voice was neither friendly nor accusing. “Brad,” he said, “there was some money taken during your shift last night. A hundred-and-twenty-five dollars. We don’t know where it’s gone, but we do know this. We know who took it . . . and there was a witness. Do you know anything about this?”
“I don’t know anything about it, Dennis.”
There was a long pause.
“Jesus,” said Brad, “don’t look at me.”
But they were looking at him. There was a small cluster of the other employees, his golf-cap buddies, watching silently.
“Let me ask you this,” said Dennis Taylor.
“I don’t know anything about it.”
“Hamilton,” said Dennis Taylor, “Carl’s has the voluntary program of a polygraph test. Would you be willing to submit to one of those tests and have this same conversation with me at that office?”
“You mean a lie detector test?”
“Yes.”
“You bet,” said Hamilton. “We all would take a test.”
“Okay,” said Taylor. “We’ll make an appointment for you tomorrow at the Harris Detective Agency, the agency that Carl’s uses in these cases; it’s located down at Third and Central. I’ll give you the card, and I’ll see you there tomorrow at, say, four.”
Hamilton looked at his friends. To his horror, they, too, were neither friendly nor accusing. They were more like a crowd of people across the street from a car wreck. They said nothing. Not David Lemon. Not Gary Myers. Not Richard Masuta. Not even Lisa. Brad felt it first as nausea. He was so angry, so confused, that only later would he try to remember who looked the guiltiest of the bunch. Who could have been a witness to his robbing Carl’s? Carl’s—his own turf?
“Aren’t you guys gonna say anything?”
They said nothing. None of them.
“You think I took that money, Dennis? You think I took that money?” Brad yanked off his Carl’s hat and apron and the country-style string tie. “Then you can SUCK SHIT because I QUIT!”
Dennis Taylor swung open the door built into the metal counter at Carl’s. “You can leave right now, Hamilton.”
Brad walked out of the top-of-Ridgemont-Drive Carl’s Jr., straight to The Cruising Vessel. He roared out of the parking lot.
Two day
s later, Brad heard that Dennis Taylor had discovered the money hidden in a paper sack in a dumpster behind the kitchen. When nobody called Brad to offer his old job back, he knew what had happened. Dennis Taylor had set him up. The I.C. had probably written a letter to the franchise, demanding Brad be fired. When the franchise called Dennis Taylor, well, that was where Taylor’s loyalty would end. He had promised to fire Brad, but was too spineless to do it outright. So he had set up a frame.
It was all beside the point, as far as Brad was concerned. He wouldn’t take their job back if they begged him. Pleaded with him. He didn’t care about Carl’s. He didn’t care about getting even with Dennis Taylor. He didn’t care about his friends who kept their mouths shut when crunch came. He didn’t even want to eat lunch with them anymore. Screw them. He’d find another job.
A Night at the Mall
It was a boring school night. Jeff Spicoli decided to head up to Town Center Mall and check out the action. He passed through the living room unnoticed by his father, who was engrossed in television. He even made it past the kitchen, where his stepmother didn’t nab him for any chores. Spicoli made it out to the street with no interference.
He reached Rock City, the mall’s pinball arcade, just after 8:30. He recognized only one face, an eighth grader, a little black kid he knew named L.C. L.C. was playing Space Invaders.
“What’s going on?” asked Jeff.
L.C. stole a look and returned to the game. “What’s going on.”
After Space Invaders, they went out to the alley behind Rock City and smoked a couple bongfuls of Colombian.
“Well,” said L.C., “I’ve got a car tonight. Let’s go cruise. See if there’s any ladies happening.”
“You can’t drive.”
“Then you drive.”
“Whose car is it?”
“My brother’s.” L.C.’s real name was Richard. They called him L.C., short for Little Charles, because his brother was Charles Jefferson.
“Where is your brother?”
“At a running clinic in Yuma, Arizona. He ain’t comin’ back until tomorrow morning.”
The desire flickered in Spicoli’s eyes. “Let’s go check the car out.”
They went out to the parking lot to inspect the car—a nice Mustang with a tape deck.
“Look at the tires,” said L.C. “Smooooooooooth.”
“I think the word is bald.”
“Well,” said L.C., “you want to cruise or not?”
Spicoli’s California driver’s license had been revoked two months after his fifteenth birthday. Spicoli had decided one night to shake loose a cop who’d thrown a light on him. The chase had ended in a cul-de-sac, where Spicoli had tried to get away by driving up onto the pavement around what were by then three police cars. He had ruined a row of lawns and two station wagons.
“Let’s cruise,” said Spicoli.
They pulled out of the TCM lot, to Mesa De Oro Liquor, where L.C. hopped out and returned a few minutes later with an eight-pack of Budweiser. L.C. handed Spicoli one.
“Guy in there told me about a party out in Laguna. Two kegs. I got the directions and everything.”
“We’re out of here,” said Spicoli.
They took Interstate 5 up the coast.
“See the new Playboy?” asked L.C.
“Naw. Any good?”
“Suzanne Somer’s tits.”
“All right.”
“I like sex,” said L.C. He said it like he had just figured it all out the day before.
They were headed for the Laguna kegger, down a lengthy stretch of road, listening to the tape deck, when a pair of headlights appeared half a mile behind them.
“Hold your beer down. I think it’s a cop.”
Spicoli slowed down; the car behind slowed down. They continued like this for another two miles. Then the car behind them pulled closer, within “busting distance.”
“This is definitely a cop,” said Spicoli.
Then the high beams of the car behind them switched on.
“What the fuck is this guy doing?”
The car behind them advanced to the point where it was almost touching the back of Charles Jefferson’s scholarship Mustang.
“What the FUCK is this guy doing?”
The car behind bumped the back of the car.
“He’s gonna scratch my brother’s car!”
The phantom car pulled back a moment, then passed Spicoli and L.C. on the left. It was a carload of laughing jocks in a Granada.
“A bunch of jocks!”
“They’re just fuckin’ with us!”
The drivers of the two cars eyed each other, both with heads tilted to the right. The classic competition pose. With an imperceptible nod of the head, Spicoli accepted the challenge. Both cars roared down Plymouth Road, toward the party.
“DIE, GRANADA JOCKS!”
“L.C.,” Spicoli yelled in the heat of the race, “you wanna roll up your window?”
“Why?”
“It messes your hair up,” said Spicoli, “to have one window down.”
“I like the air. Why don’t you roll yours down. Then you’ll get a crosswind . . .”
Spicoli shrugged and rolled down his window.
The Mustang tipped eighty and passed the Granada, even passed the exit for the party.
“EAT MY DUST!” Spicoli was grinning. He turned to L.C. “You know the thing I love about Mustangs? The steering wheel.” He fingered the bubbles in the wheel. “You can negotiate a hairpin turn with ease, my man.”
On the word ease, Spicoli had intended to show his further driving prowess behind the wheel of Charles Jefferson’s car. He curled a finger into one of the Mustang wheel bubbles and whipped it clockwise. The car screeched off Plymouth Road, onto a side street. The idea had been turn around and go back to the party.
But at the moment of the hairpin turn, L.C. had been attempting to switch the tape in the tape deck. He was thrown against Spicoli, who crooked his finger farther into the bubble than he expected. The car swung in a complete circle. Their path also included a fire hydrant, which ripped the side of the car open like a can of tuna.
“Are you okay?”
“. . . . .”
The Granada jocks flew past them, laughing.
“Are you okay?”
“My brother,” said L.C., “is going to KILL you.”
“It’s your fault, too.”
“MY BROTHER IS GOING TO KILL YOU.”
“Just be glad you’re all right, you little wimp.”
“MY BROTHER IS GONNA SHIT.”
“Make up your mind,” said Spicoli. “Is he gonna shit, or is he gonna kill us?”
“First he’s gonna shit, then he’s gonna kill us.”
It was another one of Spicoli’s dark moments, the kind that were getting all too familiar to him in his high school days. Sitting there in the battered car of the noted mauler Charles Jefferson, he waited for the screams of the police sirens.
But there was no screaming siren. The bashed Mustang started again with a death rattle. Then Spicoli and L.C. puttered back into the Ridgemont hills, where Spicoli put his mind to work.
He came up with a beauty. All he needed was a little help from L.C., and some of the soldering tools in his dad’s television repair kit. Once they had the car back up at Ridgemont High School, it took exactly twenty minutes to perform the entire deed.
The next morning, students were met with yet another curious sight. The steel letters were still gone from the green brick vanguard, but this was something else. Charles Jefferson’s Mustang had been wrecked and welded to the front flagpole. Spray-painted on the side: LINCOLN SURF NAZIS.
Homecoming
The next morning Charles Jefferson was insane. Beyond insane. By afternoon he was still wandering around lunch court speaking in half-sentences. “Someone will die . . . I had to fill out forms . . . I will find out who . . . someone will die.”
It was Homecoming Week. Ridgemont tradition held that the
school spent this week getting psyched for the game against their rival, Lincoln High. In past years the students had viewed Homecoming Week as just another high school custom established by adults. This year was different. No one had counted on the kind of incentive that came when Charles Jefferson saw his smashed Mustang. By late afternoon he had joined the Ridgemont football squad. For Ridgemont, this was more activity during football season than they’d seen in twenty years.
It took exactly two days for Kenneth Quan, the A.S.B. president, who had campaigned on the slogan Bring Back Crazy Ridgemont Spirit, to figure out a way to take advantage of it. Quan proposed a closed student council meeting in which he would discuss the details of his special plan for Homecoming Week—a little thing called TOLO.
Leave it to Quan. TOLO began as a tease campaign in the school newspaper. “TOLO is coming.” Then signs went up around school. “Watch out for TOLO.” “TOLO is almost here.”
Rumors flew as to what TOLO actually was. TOLO was a big local band that would play at lunch. Or maybe TOLO was a secret bomb to unleash on the Lincoln Surf Nazis. Bootleg TOLO signs went up: “TOLO has been kidnapped.” “TOLO changed his mind.”
Then, finally, a mandatory assembly was called. There were some brief preliminary announcements about the mural being painted on the auditorium walls (From Chaplin to Travolta), then Quan took the podium for the big announcement.
Kenneth Quan was frenzied. Kenneth Quan was always frenzied. Campaigning for A.S.B. president at the end of last year, he had given about a million speeches about the importance of spirit and enthusiasm. Quan, the former boyfriend of Cindy Carr, gave you the impression that air raids were not out of the question when it came to school spirit.
“I have detected this year,” said Quan, speaking from the school podium in a high pitch, “a lot of students who want to see some spirit here at Ridgemont High. A lot of people are really anxious to get in there and do something for the school. But maybe they feel restrained, or that they aren’t cool enough. Maybe they are afraid they might draw attention to themselves.”
Fast Times at Ridgemont High Page 9
