Michael Thomas Ford - Full Circle

by Michael Thomas Ford

  When it was announced that the Beatles would be playing a concert at Philadelphia's Convention Hall in September, we knew we had to be there. But with tickets to the show sold out in a matter of minutes, we had little hope of going. That is until Lorelei Pinkerton asked Jack if he wanted to go with her. Short, plump, and years behind her peers in the development department, Lorelei had the classic plain girl's advantage of cleverness. Sensing early on that John, Paul, George, and Ringo were something special, she had quickly volunteered to start the local chapter of their fan club. As president, she wielded enormous power, particularly when it came to tickets for the upcoming show. She had four of them, and because of this she was in much demand. She had already been asked by half a dozen boys and begged by five times that many girls, all of whom promised to love her unconditionally if she would allow them to accompany her.

  She had turned down all of them for Jack. She sat near him in several classes at school, and although he'd never so much as said hello to her, she had fallen under his spell. Now she presented him with an invitation which, despite her lack of beauty, he could hardly decline. He did, however, demand a compromise. He would go with her as long as I was allowed to come as well. Lorelei countered with a demand of her own—I would have to be the date of her cousin Betty-Anne, who was coming into town from Baltimore for the event. Negotiating on my behalf, Jack agreed, and with the deal struck, we looked forward to the date.

  That Wednesday night we walked to the Pinkertons' house to meet the girls and be driven by Lorelei's father to the show. When we arrived, we were met on the porch by a thin, pretty girl with blonde hair tied back in a ponytail. She smiled, cocked her head, and introduced herself as Betty-Anne. She beamed broadly at Jack, giving me the most cursory of glances. When she went inside to inform Lorelei of our arrival, Jack turned to me.

  "Here's the plan," he said. "You're going to be nice to Lorelei, and I'm going to have a little fun with Betty-Anne. Got it?" By then accustomed to doing whatever Jack said, I nodded without arguing. It was a stupid idea, I knew, but I also knew that once he'd settled upon a plan, Jack was determined to see it through regardless of the consequences it brought him or, more likely, me. Besides, Lorelei seemed like a nice enough girl, where Betty-Anne and her ponytail scared me. I didn't know what to say to a girl like that. When the girls came back out, we saw that Betty-Anne had attempted a makeover on her cousin, with dubious results. Lorelei's hair, normally flat, had been curled into ridiculous ringlets. Her face had been powdered to hide the pimples on her chin, and makeup had been applied with abandon to her lips and eyes. The overall effect was startling, as if she'd had an accident of some kind.

  "You look nice," I told her, knowing instinctively that she was aware of her predicament and needed reassuring. "Thanks," said Lorelei. She looked to Jack for his appraisal, but he was already deep in conversation with Betty-Anne. I could tell by Lorelei's expression that she knew she'd lost already, and was trying to decide how much of a fight to put up.

  "It was really great of you to invite us," I said quickly, attempting to distract her from her humiliation.

  "This is going to be cool."

  Lorelei looked at me as if for the first time. She smiled, and for a moment she did look pretty, even under the gaudy makeup. She nodded. "Yeah," she said. "It will." I wonder sometimes if Lorelei ever thinks about that night and, if so, how she remembers it. I remember a long drive into the city, where we were dropped outside Convention Hall by Mr. Pinkerton, who told us to be back in that exact spot at eight-thirty sharp to meet him. I remember pushing through what felt like the biggest, noisiest crowd in the world. Talking was an impossibility, as the air was filled with the screams of girls, all of whom wanted desperately to marry a Beatle. And, of course, I remember the music. Although the constant screaming made it difficult to hear the band, there was no mistaking the sounds of "Can't Buy Me Love," "A Hard Day's Night," and the other songs that had been staples on radio stations all summer long. We sang along, danced as much as we could while pressed together by a sea of bodies, and reveled in the joy of being young. When John Lennon launched into "I Want to Hold Your Hand," I looked over to see Jack and Betty-Anne doing exactly that. In a burst of expansiveness, I reached for Lorelei's hand and took it in mine. She wrapped her fingers around mine and kept them there for the remainder of the show and during our exit from the hall. Only when we approached her father's waiting Wagonaire did she reluctantly withdraw, leaving me to wipe my sweaty palm on the leg of my pants.

  Mr. Pinkerton had spent the two hours of the concert at a local watering hole, and was in a grand mood. He even allowed us to open the Wagonaire's peculiar rear hatch, designed so that tall objects could be transported easily. The fresh air cooled the heat generated by our excitement and the tight confines of the show, and gave Jack an excuse to put his arm around Betty-Anne. Mr. Pinkerton, his vigilance against hanky-panky dulled by half a dozen beers, pretended not to notice. Lorelei scooted over on the seat and pressed her side meaningfully against mine. Having made the first move by holding her hand, I felt obligated to go on, and so dutifully placed my arm across her shoulders. She leaned her head to one side, so that her hair pressed against my cheek and tickled my nose. For the remainder of the ride, I tried to gently blow it away from my nostrils, all the while fearing that Lorelei would mistake my puffing for further attempts at lovemaking. It was on the front porch that I had my revelation. While Jack and Betty-Anne snuck a few kisses away from the glare of the porch light, Lorelei sat on the steps beside me, her hands folded neatly on her lap.

  "Thanks for coming with me," she said. "I had a good time."

  "Me, too," I told her. "Thanks for asking me. I mean for asking Jack."

  I hesitated, afraid I'd said the one thing that would ruin the evening. I hadn't meant to remind Lorelei that I hadn't been her intended date, and that the boy she had asked was now busily kissing her traitorous cousin not six feet away from where we sat.

  "I'm sorry," I said, fumbling for words. "I didn't mean…"

  "It's okay," Lorelei said. "Really. I had a better time with you anyway."

  "You did?" I asked, genuinely surprised.

  She nodded. "Jack is, well, Jack," she said cryptically. "You're different. You're nice." "Nice," I repeated.

  "Nice is good," said Lorelei, sensing that I might be disappointed by her choice of descriptive. "You make me feel like a real person, not some airhead like Betty-Anne." "You think she's an airhead?" I asked her.

  Lorelei snorted. "Have you seen my hair?" she said. "Whose idea do you think this was?" I laughed. "It's not so bad," I said. "And you're pretty nice, too."

  Lorelei paused, then said, "Can I ask you something?"

  "Sure," I replied.

  "Why are you friends with him?"

  "Jack?" I said. "We've always been friends. Why?"

  "You're just so different is all," said Lorelei.

  "Maybe that's why we're friends," I suggested.

  "Maybe," Lorelei said, not sounding convinced. "Anyway, I hope you and I can be friends." "You mean go out again?" I said hesitantly, having been down this road before. "No," she said. "Just friends. No offense, but I think you make a better friend than a boyfriend." "Oh," I said, both surprised and relieved.

  Lorelei, apparently taking my response for dejection, put her hand on mine. "Not that it wasn't fun holding hands and all that," she said.

  "No, it's okay," I told her. "Friends is fine. I'd like that."

  She kissed me on the cheek. "I couldn't go out with you anyway," she said as she stood up. "I'm saving myself for George."

  "George?" I said. "What about Paul? He's a lot better looking." "I'll see you in school next week," said Lorelei as she entered the house, letting the door bang loudly to alert Betty-Anne, who pulled herself away from Jack and reluctantly followed her cousin inside.

  "She's some girl," Jack said as we walked home. "What a kisser! How'd you do with Lorelei?" "I had fun," I said. "I like her."

  J
ack continued to talk about Betty-Anne and her assets. I tuned him out, thinking about what Lorelei had said about me making a better friend than a boyfriend. I didn't fully comprehend what she meant, but it made some things a lot clearer for me. Maybe the girls who fell for me did so not for any definable reason, but because they felt comfortable around me. Where Jack had looks and personality, perhaps I had something less tangible but equally powerful.

  Maybe, I thought, that's why Jack, too, continued to befriend me. Was it really possible that with all the attention heaped upon him by so many people, what he really sought was someone who saw beyond his looks and charm to the person underneath? It was an intoxicating thought, and thinking that it might be true filled me with more joy than holding the hand of Lorelei, or any other girl, ever could.

  CHAPTER 6

  Now that I've almost certainly passed the halfway point in my climb up the mountain of this life and am coasting down the other side with a tailwind at my back, I sometimes wish I could slow time to a crawl. I think this is why many of us, as we age, require fewer and fewer hours of sleep. It's not that our bodies have become more efficient; it's that we're afraid we'll miss something by wasting precious hours in slumber when we could be eating ice cream, reading Shakespeare, or scanning the night sky for falling stars. How many times have I wished for just two or three more hours in a day, not in which to accomplish a task, but simply to enjoy being?

  Contrast this to the teenage years, when time can't possibly move quickly enough and every second seems to arrive more slowly than the last in the plodding journey toward adulthood. Those days are all rushing and hurrying, leaping from one adventure to another, storing up experience and memories enough to last the rest of our lives. Like bees, we dart and gather, pausing only long enough to take from life whatever we can carry. Only later do we realize that we can't remember what color the flowers were, or how they smelled.

  Many things happened in 1965. Malcolm X was assassinated just as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement he championed took center stage in American life. Lost in Space premiered on CBS

  and Quaker Oats introduced Quisp cereal to grocery shelves. In Detroit, 82-year-old Alice Herz poured a container of lighter fluid over her head and lit a match, immolating herself as a protest against the escalating violence in Vietnam. Willie Mays hit home run number 512, breaking the National League record, and the Rolling Stones released "Satisfaction."

  For Jack and me, none of these was the major event of the year. That honor belonged to our two-week stay on Treasure Island. For several years we had been part of local Boy Scout troop 49, meeting once a week after school and learning the basics of camping, knot tying, and other skills that would come in handy should we ever find ourselves lost in the woods and needing to construct temporary shelter and a fire. We went primarily because we liked collecting merit badges, and together and separately we'd managed to amass a number of them.

  That summer we were going for the rank of Second Class. We'd reached Tenderfoot the summer before, and were anxious to be rid of that embarrassing designation. In order to reach our goal, we had to, among other requirements, plan and execute a 10-mile hike, display proficiency in swimming, identify ten examples of local wildlife, outline the procedure for removing a foreign object from the eye, and, to quote the handbook, "demonstrate Scout spirit by living the Scout Oath and Scout Law in everyday life."

  Should we accomplish all of these things, we would be allowed to attend the annual Pennsylvania troop gathering at Treasure Island, held the week following our birthdays. Inspired by the idea of two weeks away from our parents, we completed our tasks in record time, earning our Second Class patches and our places on the trip. And so a few days after turning 15, Jack and I found ourselves loading ourselves and our gear onto a bus with thirty-two other scouts and heading for the Avalon of local scouting.

  Treasure Island is legendary in scout circles. Open as a camp since 1913, it sits in the middle of the Delaware river, connected to its sister island, Marshall, by a small footbridge which, because Treasure Island is part of New Jersey and Marshall Island belongs to Pennsylvania, is considered the smallest interstate bridge in the United States. While this is undoubtedly fascinating, of more interest to we scouts was the knowledge that the Unami Indians had once called the island home, and that arrowheads were still sometimes found there.

  There were twelve campsites scattered around Treasure Island, named after animals or important figures from scout history, and which site your troop was assigned to was considered an unofficial measure of your rank in the scout hierarchy. Wolf and Eagle sites were the most prized, for obvious reasons, and those such as Baden-Powell (named for the founder of the British Boy Scout Association) and Edson (after the co-founder of the elite scout program the Order of the Arrow) were acceptable if unexciting, while the hardly-intimidating Beaver and Bok were not high on most scouts' list of desirable locations. For those of us from Pennsylvania, the greatest calamity was to be assigned to the site called Jersey. When our group learned that we would be camping at Nip site, we were relieved. Although its name was hardly inspiring, its location at the southeast end of the island, close to the Unami ceremonial grounds, gave it a certain cachet among the other campers. Slightly removed from the center of camp life, it also afforded a little more privacy, and its proximity to the Jersey camp (which that year was indeed populated by scouts from nearby Frenchtown) assured us of some memorable nighttime raids. Jack and I quickly set up our tent and rolled out our sleeping bags. Housekeeping thus accomplished, we joined our troop mates for the walk to the clearing at the island's center. There, gathered around the flag pole, we were welcomed to Treasure Island, informed of the rules of our island society, and given the day's schedule, which began with a mandatory health check and swim test and finished with a campfire.

  The daily routine of a scout camp is interesting only to those who are in the midst of it, and so I will pass briefly over the mess hall meals, survival skills practices, archery competitions, leather craft classes, and canoe races. In these things our Treasure Island experience was no different from that of scouts throughout history. Where Jack and I diverged from our fellow scouts was in what occurred on the night of Saturday, August 21.

  We were at the end of a perfect first week. The weather, sunny and clear, had turned our skins a golden brown. We'd racked up three new merit badges each, and Jack had led our troop to a Capture the Flag win over the previous year's champions, Troop 137 from Erie. Already there was talk of nominating him to the Order of the Arrow once he earned his First Class rank. This distinction, the only one in scouting voted on by one's peers, was bestowed upon only the most popular and accomplished campers. Jack, as a first-time visitor to Treasure Island, should have been far down the list of potential candidates. The fact that his name was mentioned for inclusion by both campers and scout leaders was further proof of his natural ability to outshine everyone around him.

  With still another week to go, we were at the pinnacle of happiness. That night, we sat beside one another at the all-camp bonfire, lustily singing the words to the camp song. Although I've been able to forget many things in the intervening years, the words to that ode to Treasure Island have remained stuck in my memory, and only partially because they were sung to the tune of the familiar and oft-used "Annie Lisle."

  "By the river that surrounds thee, rolling mile on mile, 'neath the stars that shine above thee, dear ole'

  Treasure Isle. We who know thy woodland treasures pause in thought awhile, calling back to mind thy pleasures, dear ole' Treasure Isle." It goes on in a similar vein for another two verses, charming in its imagery and hideous in its outdated and ungrammatical wording. But we noticed none of that then, lost as we were in the camaraderie created when 150 boys are brought together for a shared experience. Like participants at a revival, we were filled with the spirit of the Boy Scouts, lifted high on a wave of brotherhood and pride. At that moment we were invincible, unafraid of darkne
ss, rain, or snakebite. We were prepared for any emergency, sure that our scout resolve could handle anything. Had our scoutmasters asked us to launch an offensive against the enemies of Scout Law, we would have done it, and gladly. As we arrived at the song's final verse, with its message of finding warmth and hope in our fellow scouts, Jack leaned over and whispered in my ear, "Let's go swimming."

  Swimming at night was not allowed, but before I could protest, Jack had disappeared into the shadows. I went after him, following his darkened form as he raced down the path, not toward our camp, but toward the southernmost end of the island. As we darted through the trees, I tried to get him to slow down. He simply laughed and ran ahead, forcing me to keep up. The moon, in its waning quarter, provided little light, and Jack's shadow leapt from one patch of silvery glow to the next like Peter Pan's running from its owner.

  Finally the forest ended and I found myself standing beside Jack at the edge of the river. He was already removing his shoes and socks.

  "We can't swim in the river," I said. "It's against the rules. We're only supposed to swim in the pool."

  "Come on," Jack said. "It isn't flowing that fast, and we won't go far. Nobody will know." He pulled his T-shirt over his head and shucked his shorts off. I saw a glimpse of his ass, pale above his tanned legs, as he waded into the water. He turned and waved at me. "Come on. It's not that cold." I reluctantly did as he said, placing my clothes beside his and walking to the water. I stuck one foot in. While not exactly warm, it wasn't as cold as I'd expected, and I followed after Jack until the water was up to our chests and we could swim.

  "See," Jack said. "The current isn't bad at all." He was right about that. There was a slight current, but as long as we swam against it, we weren't pushed away from the island. Confident that there would be no difficulty getting back, Jack ducked under the water. A moment later, I was pulled under with him.