The pears floating in the zero gravity of the still heat melted in midair, attracting yellow jackets, while I drove the bell of the shovel into the mounds, listening to them strike the crisp fresh-cut plastic. Gwen. Something we exchanged in that fascinated vacuum is still inside me. I catch a glimpse of it in tool shed windows and bathroom mirrors—especially on becalmed afternoons, when I’m drunk with loneliness, or mysteries about the past.
And there you are once more, as real as any moist lost July can never be. Green eyed and witnessing . . . watching you falling toward me, exploding sweetness, not another sound in the neighborhood. Not a car, not a spaniel—not even a hornet’s wing. The girl I couldn’t have . . . all mine. All me. Spray of fallen fruit on my bare chest.
VAT 69
I sort of remember the first time I ever got drunk. Mike and I sat against a sun-burnt brick wall, on a bed of broken glass ground into powder, and gulped down two fifths of Scotch in less than two minutes.
I don’t remember much after that.
Except for some reason, falling face down on Angela Terry’s bed.
I know well enough the reason why I fell. I was trying to touch one hand to the carpet to keep from spinning right out of the room, with the other hand smacked up against her bubblegum aqua wall, with a pink bra in sight, in the black behind my eyeballs little emergency lights that looked like the decals that parents used to stick in windows to tell firemen where the children sleep (back when people didn’t worry so much about child molesters and suburban teenage vampires).
Then of course, I had to avoid the vomit on the bedspread and rearrange her stuffed animals. But how I ever got to the door, let alone inside of Angela’s house, remains one of at least my life’s great mysteries.
I wonder if I knew that the Terrys weren’t home, or if I was just winging it?
That Airedale gave me some trouble, though. Good thing about her little brother’s backyard trampoline.
Well, sort of a good thing. When the swelling went down.
AWAY GAMES
When I was little, I called it the Bighound Bus but I meant the mighty Greyhound. From Portland to the Port Authority, the cheapest distance between two points.
Too many is the number of nights I spent “riding the Dog” between the broken homes. I smelled the burgers sizzling, rolling into Morgan Hill at midnight, and the odor of toilets overflowing in San Jose. I saw the lingerie and violence of Oakland neon, the broken glass shining like broken glass in the street.
But I always look back to one Christmas Eve when I was riding with drunken soldiers smoking White Owl cigars—two hookers from Vallejo across the aisle, and a junkie beside me who was in a bad way all the way from the Fifth Ward in Houston.
A black woman rose with a bassinet she’d been balancing and when the bus stopped at a station, she stepped off for a moment—and I swear that when she came back, the bassinet was gone.
On the highway home from high school football games, I used to dream about that child. While the cheerleaders chanted in the back of the bus, I wondered what it would be like to grow up in the midst of smoke and baggage, the soft voices behind me singing . . . Beat ’em bust ’em . . . that’s our custom . . . roll ’em . . . roll ’em . . .
DANDELION SAFARI
You could smoke dope in that savannah of gopher holes and garter snakes. You could spray the names of teachers that pissed you off on the windswept cinderblock walls.
Supposedly, the owner of the Lion Park once wore a pith helmet and even waved a whip to wake up the sleepy stars of his show, but the tourists never arrived in the droves he’d dreamed about, so he started missing his payments and hitting the bottle. Then he fell for the girl who worked the peanut counter, knocked her up and went down on statutory rape charges.
But she remained loyal . . . and one afternoon before the bank foreclosed, they made love in his Lincoln at the lights of the railway crossing . . . until an early evening express collided with the car and killed them both. Then men in a big truck from a zoo somewhere came to collect the animals orphaned by the accident. Some of those sad beasts had been waiting a long time for meat.
I don’t know if we ever believed the story completely, but I can say for certain that when my friends and I wandered through the barren cages overgrown with grass and thistles, we always imagined we were being followed.
Whistling across the mouth of a brown beer bottle, we imagined we heard huge paws padding softly in the golden dry—or the light stride of a young girl’s ghost.
It wasn’t until we were staring at the red-eyed signal beside the tracks, where the accident was rumored to have occurred, that we relaxed—and even then, superstition claimed that it was good luck to place an empty bottle on the rails.
When the sun went down and the breeze began to breathe, you might’ve heard as many as twenty empty bottles blowing, like a phantom freight train closing in. We called it the ROAR OF THE IONS, just like the battered billboard by the highway promised us we’d hear.
LOS MURMURADORES
Knee-deep in manure and mud. Our arms ached with the weight of the irrigation pipes, our eyes drawn to the distant silver spindles spraying a fine mist of stolen water over green iceberg lettuce.
At dusk we’d gather around the cool blue rectangle of the ranch’s pool just to listen to the hiss of the tile-cleaning jet, because swimming was tolerated only in the canal.
We all played Wiffle ball in our boxer shorts, and we all doused bullfrogs with lighter fluid. But when the kegs of beer were pumped, Stamond Jones, the foreman, allowed only the gringos to drink.
With cold foam in his belly, he ruled with a uniquely white blend of old-fashioned cruelty and a modern time-is-money lust for machines.
I remember the day he installed the automatic scarecrow to bedevil the magpies. It was a self-contained, fully independent bird-scaring system, he proudly informed us.
Whatever it was, it scared the tar out of the children who lived in the wetback hovels behind the fuel depot.
In California, they say when you walk through the orchards, someone’s always watching you. But when you hear the peach trees whispering in fearful Spanish, you know you’re being watched by the wide young eyes of the orchard itself.
INDEPENDENCE NIGHT
I met Lewis “the Dollar Bill” Hill, whose head shape reminded me of the Australopithecus robustus skull in my Life Nature Library book Early Man, at a thing called Boys State. It was a weeklong program at Cal State–Sacramento run by the American Legion to build character, inspire leadership, acquaint young men with the political system and, of course, develop teamwork. I was the only one at my school who came to the interview session, at the insistence of one of my teachers, who thought it would look good on my record. A sad little man with an American Legion T-shirt and a kind of a Shriner’s hat (but not as good) was sitting all alone at a card table in the wrestling room of the gym. I told him I wanted to learn more about the political system and what made America a great country. That was in May. The program wasn’t on until July.
I worked out in my mind that the only kind of guys that would go on something like that would be Eagle Scouts or namby-pamby nitwits trying to garner another credential for college admission, which was exactly what I was doing. It never occurred to me that there’d be guys like me there. It didn’t really occur to me that anyone was like me anywhere.
The weeks passed, I worked for a month in the fields and at last the bus came. Suddenly I was in Sacramento and it was about 200 degrees. I put on my white Boys State T-shirt that you had to wear. I found my room and started reconciling myself to a week of excruciating boredom and alienation. Then I heard a voice that made me stop unpacking my underwear.
“Look out, people, the Dollar Bill’s doin’ some serious inflation.”
“Hm,” I thought. I had my hash pipe in my hand at the time, which I carried everywhere just in case—and just when I thought I’d bury it for a week in a ball of socks—I had this feeling I might need it af
ter all. I went out to have a look. A Neanderthal-looking black guy in scarlet gym shorts was in the process of inflating a green-and-yellow-spotted pool pony in the hall. I was pretty sure I knew where this particular pool pony had come from, having already inspected the swimming facilities. Some sort of children’s summer swimming class was happening and pool ponies were standard issue. I suspected there would be one less pool pony come roundup time. I also suspected I was looking at one of my two roommates.
I was right. This figure, who kept referring to himself as “the Dollar Bill,” was indeed one of my roommates and for reasons that remain obscure, he was attempting to see just how much air the rustled pool pony could hold. “Jesus,” I said, “it’s going to explode!” His face was swollen and his eyes were bulging and the spots on the pool pony were stretching out until they were fat blobs, the plastic skin as a tight as a drum.
I must’ve recognized a kindred spirit in his distorted face, because I had a sudden flash of inspiration. “Helium!” I shouted suddenly. “We’ll send it up like a balloon!”
That got his attention. He checked me out with a quick street glance. “Well, all right. Now you’re talkin’.”
With all these guys in white American Legion Boys State T-shirts around, I was paranoid about talking about drugs or partying. We were there to learn. Then our third roommate showed up. His name was Jim. He was a Tex-Mex-looking guy from Modesto, which we didn’t hold against him. He worked as a welder after school and he’d made enough money to buy an El Camino with a camper top and a mattress in the back. Jimbo’s big thing in life was girls, which he called his “old ladies.” That impressed me. He’d already bagged quite a bit of wild game and he came to study the democratic process with a Tupperware container of very fine sinsemilla, which we proceeded to torch in my pipe, while explaining our dilemma about getting some helium for the pool pony.
Substantial quantities of helium are readily available. It’s after all the second most common element, and with Jimbo’s background in welding, we thought we had a natural edge in locating some. It didn’t matter. Lewis the Dollar Bill was on the case. While Jimbo and I and the rest of the Boys Police State trooped off to the basketball gym for an assembly where we were addressed by the little eighty-year-old head of the American Legion and unofficial mascot of the program, Philo, a bizarre white-haired man who stood only about four feet tall, Lewis was busy “borrowing” several helium cylinders from a nearby carnival that was gearing up to do a big balloon business on the Fourth of July. We’d set our minds on nabbing all the pool ponies and sending them aloft.
Jimbo, who had smoked about three bowls too many before going in, took one look at Philo and decided a cheer was in order. There were over a thousand guys in that gym. If you wanted a cheer to be heard, you had to stand up and stamp your feet. To the sheer amazement, amusement and shock of all of us around him, Jimbo leapt to his feet, and like a demented street corner evangelist screaming for the world to repent its sins and win one for the home team, he started clapping his hands, pounding his feet and bellowing, “Philo! Philo! Philo!”
The ferocity of his enthusiasm was intense. He seemed so happy, so sure he was doing the right thing—I couldn’t leave him there, belting his heart out, alone. I jumped to my feet, for there was no slow rising—straight into it—born again—“Philo! Philo! Philo!”
By now there was a lot of commotion around the echoing gym. Little Philo was standing at half-court transfixed before a skinny microphone that was taller than he was. If he’d said anything into the microphone the cheer would’ve died. But he didn’t. He must’ve been taken off guard—and I think his vanity was inflated. He stood stone still, soaking in this strange praise drifting down from the bleachers. Jimbo and I yelled on. “Philo! Philo! Philo!”
Suddenly, the boy next to me rose and joined in. “Is this what you do? Does this happen every year?” Not to be left alone, the kid slapped his friend next to him. He started cheering the loudest of all. Then across the arena a lone bug-eyed young scientist rose like the dead and started screaming. “PHILO! PHILO! PHILO!” Jimbo’s voice was cracking with the strain and our hands were pain-red from clapping, but he stepped out of his seat at the end of a row and started gesturing to a whole section. He was getting some warped looks, but he was way past caring about that. He just swung his arms like a symphony conductor. It took ten seconds of the most committed crowd work I’ve ever seen. Finally, finally, they rose! And just as Jimbo triumphed over them, another whole section rose in unison, their feet thundering, their voices raised. Then another! “PHILO! PHILO! PHILO!” This was the real democratic process in action. Just shout loud enough and people will join in.
Down in the center of the court Philo stood, listening to his name screamed and chanted, and ever so slightly, almost invisibly, barely perceptibly, you could almost see his hands move, his shoe quiver. Suddenly Philo clapped and stomped his foot! The dam was broken! One thousand boys were on their feet cheering, “PHILO! PHILO! PHILO!” We’d turned a silly little white-haired elf into a hero—or at least a mascot.
While we were chanting and cheering, Lewis was stealing enough helium to set a whole box canyon of pool ponies aloft. Why send one, when you can send them all? The obvious occasion was the Fourth of July, Independence Day. There was going to be a full moon and fireworks over the river. What a way to be proud to be an American. So we broke into the swimming pool and heisted every single pool pony we could find. We were going to launch them from the roof of our dormitory at exactly midnight, having enjoyed the fireworks display stoned out of our minds. The only problem was we wanted something to drink too. That’s what national holidays are all about, after all.
But to make a booze run, we had to cross a narrow bridge that passed through a huge cyclone fence marking the boundary of the campus. Jimbo had the misfortune of looking like a Mexican gang leader. Lewis’s skull would’ve attracted attention in a museum of natural history, and I looked like I couldn’t decide if I was a hippie or a pimp, with shoulder-length hair, mirror shades and a blue satin pool-shark vest. We’d stand out like dog’s balls once we crossed the bridge. But the most remarkable thing of all is that all three of us forgot to take off our Boys State T-shirts.
The liquor store we went to was like a low-budget 7-Eleven with a cinderblock wall about knee-high surrounding the parking lot. Behind the store was an overgrown field that was waiting for the sprawl of housing developments to catch up with it. One street had been finished. Bulldozers, back hoes and steam rollers waited in the next cul-de-sac, then a dreadful high-rise of swinging-singles apartments.
Well, we were so high, it hadn’t clicked yet that we were still wearing our “uniforms,” which proclaimed to all the world that we were underage. So there we were, loaded down with enough booze to drown, when in walks Mr. Higginbottom, one of the dorm monitors, wearing his Boys State T-shirt and American Legion hat. He was about forty-five and one of the biggest tight-asses the world has ever seen. The burly pea brain with Clark Kent glasses behind the counter took one look at him and three looks at us, and noticed something similar, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He may have wondered about our ages, but we’d given him exact change. It was easier just to let us go. Lewis was out the door in a flash with a shopping cart filled with clinking bottles. Jimbo and I froze just long enough for Higginbottom to get a make on our T-shirts. Outside, Higginbottom’s two buddies were in a car. I heard one of them call out to Lewis. I thought if we could just keep cool . . . Then the cashier blew it all by bolting out and hollering, “Hey, you forgot your tequila!”
A car door opened. Higginbottom ran out and yelled. Lewis was waddling at high speed behind the creaky-wheeled cart. Jimbo and I were right behind. Higginbottom got in the car. We heard him say, “Cut them off at the bridge; they’re some of ours.” Tires screeched. We were done for. Expulsion. Apologies to parents and principals. We’d already heard some of the horror stories. And what about our pool ponies, sitting up on the roof with all those
stolen cylinders of helium? No, they weren’t going to take us alive! We grabbed as many bottles as we could carry and bounded across that vacant field, laughing like idiots in our white T-shirts. The grass was chest-high. There were huge potholes. If we tripped and fell, a broken bottle might cut us open. Then they’d catch us at the bridge. If we could only slip back in, they’d have to pick us out of a thousand other guys in white T-shirts. We could disguise ourselves somehow. Once we were back on campus, we could hide the booze and they couldn’t prove a thing. We had to make it to the bridge.
We were running and laughing through tall grass, racing a brown Camaro to a narrow bridge, and I don’t think I’ve ever been happier. Even when I hit that gopher hole and flew ass-over-elbow with a terrible wrenching pain in my ankle, I was still laughing. I crashed in a heap of cement dust and dandelions. Jimbo ran on and made the bridge just as the brown Camaro skidded into the dirt beside the Cyclone fence. One safe, two still on the outside. One man down. Lewis, who ran like an electrocuted gazelle hallucinating cheetahs in every direction, froze in midstride, torn between helping me and saving his own ass. He had about a heartbeat to make up his mind.
I didn’t know then that a year later, on my birthday, I’d drive my old Dodge Dart to pick Lewis up to go see an Earth, Wind and Fire concert at the Oakland Coliseum. Lewis lived in Richmond, a gritty shipbuilder’s town of sheet metal and domestic murders, on the bad side of the Bay. It was a 1940s pink beaverboard bungalow that smelled of damp foam. Lewis let me in and I could see he was anxious to leave. We didn’t quite get out in time. A black man about thirty-five, naked except for a dirty white tank top and a bandage on his foot, staggered out of one of the little bedrooms into the kitchen and took a leak in the sink. We heard what I took to be Lewis’s mother croak out hoarsely from the bedroom. Lewis slammed the door when we left.
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