Grouper's Laws
Page 1
D. Philip Miller
Grouper’s Laws
A 1960s Tale of High School Hijinks and Romance
All Rights Reserved © 2019 by D. Philip Miller
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system without express permission in writing from the author.
For information address:
D. Philip Miller
22117 SE 40th Lane
Issaquah, WA 98029
ISBN: 978-154-399-1680
Printed in the United State of America
Cover photo of Dodge Lancer by Greg Gjerdingen
For all who survived high school.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
EPILOGUE
GROUPER’S LAWS
CHAPTER ONE
The singing of the tires was his executioner’s song. In minutes, the faded yellow bus would disgorge him at his place of incarceration where, physically or spiritually (or both), he would suffer certain death from the unthinking actions of an unspeakable collection of geeks and goons. Blondie could envision no other outcome from his first day at Fenton High.
On rolled the bus, past copycat collections of brick ramblers and two-story colonials where runty trees and whiskers of grass fought for existence on burned over late-summer lawns. Look-alike homes for think-alike people, Blondie thought, most of them occupied by families fleeing Baltimore for a hoped-for taste of country living.
Blondie had begged his dad not to move to Fenton after he retired from the small Signal Corps base in Percy fifteen miles away. He’d stressed to him the importance of living someplace more sophisticated than Fenton — a place where people covered their mouths when they belched.
His dad hadn’t found his comment amusing.
“People are the same everywhere,” he’d said.
Maybe for adults. Not for kids. Every kid in Mayhew County knew Fenton’s adolescents were the least civilized of all known teen rabble.
This morning, the evidence was indisputable. Stop after stop, they’d piled onto the bus — cretins of every form and in every costume imaginable. Long- necked boys in loose-fitting western shirts and blue jeans. Pony-tailed girls in poodle skirts, with stick legs and braces on their teeth. Duck-tailed fatsos in stretched-out tee shirts. Aspiring harlots with pale lipstick and beehive hairdos.
The boys tripped each other getting onto the bus or shot each other the finger or farted or cleaned their ears with pencils. The girls giggled or gossiped or taunted the boys or stared out the window as if they weren’t there at all. Could he possibly, Blondie con-sidered with dismay, be genetically linked to creatures such as these?
Blondie sat by himself on the blood-red vinyl on one of the last seats toward the rear, staring at the graffiti scratched on the back of the seat in front of him. “J.S. LUVS R.L.” “GO FLYERS” and the inevitable “FUCK YOU.” For relief, he lowered his eyes, only to encounter on the rubber-grooved floor myriad deposits of chewing gum turned to stone, miniature hairballs, paper wads, pencil erasers and cigarette butts. And this was only the first day of school!
It was even more dismal than he’d contem-plated. Again, Blondie felt his sense of betrayal well up inside. Why couldn’t his parents have moved to Baltimore? At the very least, why couldn’t his dad have bought a house near Percy so he could have finished high school with the kids he knew? So what if his dad had landed a job with the Fenton water district? There were other water districts, other jobs.
The day would get worse. He’d have to go to the office and meet the principal who would say something fatuous like, “It must be pretty difficult changing schools at the start of your senior year. But I suppose you’re used to it, having grown up in the military.”
Everyone always thought that. What did they know? Did they expect him to say, “Actually, it’s pretty scary?” Did they expect him to give them that much of an edge?
The sun slanted through the dusty window onto his face, drawing him from his anxiety. Blondie loved the feel of sun on his face. Its rays were warm through the glass, though Blondie remembered the air’s cold bite while he’d been waiting at his stop. He loved autumn: its crisp mornings, its turning leaves, its tinge of nostalgia. For a moment, he transported himself to another time, another place, where the coming of fall had been free from the threat of school.
An object flew to the front of the bus where it banged against the side of the driver’s seat. The driver, a near dwarf of great girth, cast a malevolent glare to the back of the bus. He muttered something indeci-pherable and turned the wheel.
They entered a more established development where homes were constructed of sturdy fieldstone and lawns carpeted with a rich green shag. White-shuttered windows looked out upon summer zinnias and dahlias.
Spewing gravel, the bus rattled to a halt. Blondie’s throat tightened. Each stop drew him nearer his doom. He’d never been able to think of anything beyond that first day in a new school, no matter how many times his family had moved — the awful staring of the students, the disgusting cooing of concerned teachers, his own overwhelming self-consciousness.
Blondie consoled himself with the thought that within eight hours he’d be back home again, eating dinner with his mom and dad. But it was a knowledge that held no emotional content and offered no solace. Emotionally, there was only that first moment, the first creeping caterpillar of a day in a new school when he was the magnetic pole for a thousand prying eyes.
This time, Blondie promised himself he would be ready. He would withdraw so far inside himself that faces would register no more than far-away clouds and voices no more than distant echoes.
Then she got on the bus. Into the midst of the riotous freak show walked a Madonna, the apotheosis of young womanhood. Her skin was pale as daybreak, her lips red as fire, her hair dark and shiny as a moonlit sea. She was slender, boyish — as he preferred — her movements lithe and unstudied.
Blondie’s libido awakened with a fusillade of longing and lust, routing his first-day fears. He watched entranced as she approached him in a straight dark skirt, pink sweater, rolled-down socks and penny loafers, carrying a vinyl gym bag in the crimson-and-cream colors of Fenton High School.
As she drew near, he realized the seat next to him was vacant. My God, was she going to sit beside him! What would he say? He wasn’t prepared. Hi
s face burst into flames. His tongue flopped once or twice inside his mouth as he tried to form words to cast her way, then turned as fat and lifeless as a dead fish. Blondie mustered all his will and forced his mouth into a rictus-like smile that was wasted on the angel’s back as she seated herself two rows ahead. A homely girl with pigtails who’d followed her onto the bus plopped down beside her.
Blondie glanced around, expecting a stir from the young males on the bus, an echo of the tremor that had shaken him. They were as busily committing perverted acts upon each other as before. What was wrong with them? Didn’t they realize a queen had just boarded the bus? No wonder they were so lost.
A raucous grinding of gears and a sudden jolt knocked Blondie from his reverie. He looked out the window and his skin froze. They were here: The Big House!
Blocking the horizon was an endless gray facade. It stared at him with a hundred eyes of glass. And behind each of those unblinking squares would be scores of smaller eyes ready to examine his every pore, his every move.
Blondie sat paralyzed as the unruly horde massed for the exit. He stared at the stainless-steel letters that named his prison: F-E-N-T-O-N-H-I-G-H-S-C-H-O-O-L. His mind added the only possible subtext: Nothing inspiring ever has — or ever will — happen here.
When he glanced around again, his Venus was gone, swallowed by the multitude that had erupted from the massed army of buses. A fearball as cold and compact as a dead star settled in the bottom of Blondie’s stomach. The moment of truth had arrived.
CHAPTER TWO
Like toothpaste oozing from a tube, Blondie squeezed his lean body through the frenzied throng and off the bus, wishing all the while he was more nondescript. At six foot three, he towered over his new schoolmates, his corn-silk hair floating like a whitecap above waves of brown and black scalps. Why did he have to sport hair like an albino’s? Why couldn’t he ever gain any weight? Why did he have to look like a fucking Ichabod Crane?
He avoided looking at himself in the glass panes of the school entranceway. He didn’t want to be confronted by the sight of his prominent ears, ready for lift-off, and his Adam’s apple, ready to burst through his throat. For years, he’d pushed his ears closer to his skull and his larynx back into his neck. All he’d ever gained for his efforts were red ears and a sore throat.
Blondie kept his chin up and his eyes dead ahead as he bobbed through the stream of untouchables thrashing their way through the double doorway. He wasn’t going in looking at the ground. He would maintain his dignity no matter what horrors the day offered up.
Remember to breathe. Pace yourself. Don’t trip or you’ll go under. Yet, within yards of the doorway, the milling crowd divided and dispersed like runoff from a spring shower. Soon, he was nearly alone, staring down long corridors of shiny black linoleum flanked by gunmetal lockers.
He was supposed to report to the principal’s office, but which way was it? Every hallway looked the same. Blondie stopped to get his bearings and was launched from his spot by a sudden impact from behind.
“Kee-rist, don’t just fucking stop in the middle of the hall,” a voice growled.
Blondie turned to face a squint-eyed youth in an embroidered denim shirt. He was leaning toward Blondie and glaring at him as if ready for a fight.
“I’m sorry,” Blondie said, immediately regretting it. What had he done wrong?
The boy was a good four inches shorter than Blondie and even thinner, his neck thin and crooked as a vulture’s. But his reddish arms were hard, as were his angular face and colorless eyes.
“He’s staring at you, Buford,” said a nearby fat kid in coveralls.
The hard-faced boy ignored his companion and continued staring at Blondie. The boy’s eyes bored into his self-confidence like augers. His legs began to liquefy.
“You know what he reminds me of, Buford?” the chubby one called to his friend. “A giraffe. A white giraffe.” He started to giggle.
Buford’s eyes never wavered. Blondie returned his gaze though his heart was racing. Seconds congealed into minutes, then eons, as the boy continued to stare. To break the unbearable tension, Blondie asked: “Did you know that monkeys stare at each other as a way of establishing dominance?”
Later, he thought maybe he’d meant it as a joke.
“I think the giraffe just called you a monkey,” the fat kid said.
Buford’s eyes narrowed even more and his body shifted as if he were going to strike out but, whatever his intention, it was cut short by a shout from down the hall.
“Is there a problem, Barnwell? Aren’t you supposed to be in class?” Blondie, who’d been suffering the dread thought that others were watching the mortifying confrontation, unlocked his eyes from Buford’s and looked around. The hallway was empty except for a man approaching in a rumpled brown suit.
He was a big man with a big face and a powerful ambling gait.
“It’s the Bear,” the fat boy whispered to his friend.
“Why aren’t you ever where you’re supposed to be, Barnwell?” the man demanded of Blondie’s tormentor. His eyes looked like they’d just been stropped.
“This jerk ran into me.”
The big man ignored the boy’s challenging tone.
“It’s amazing how many people run into you,” he said to Buford with an air of tedium. “Now, get on to class.”
“I’ll remember this,” the hothead whispered to Blondie as he passed.
The man now turned to Blondie. He was as tall as Blondie, but much heavier. Although his anger seemed to have passed, Blondie found him intimi-dating.
“Why aren’t you in class?” he asked in a surprisingly soft voice.
“This is my first day. I’m supposed to see the principal.”
“Well, you’re going the wrong way.” The man’s annoyance returned.
Blondie wanted to turn and head right back out the door. His classmates at Percy had been right. Kids at Fenton were animals — and so were the staff. What had the skinny kid called this hulk? The Bear?
“Follow me,” the man ordered.
Resisting his impulse to flee, Blondie followed him down a series of corridors to a door bearing, in gilt letters, the word “Office.” Once inside, the big man delivered Blondie to a frail gray-haired man with baggy eyes and strolled away.
“Thank you, Mr. Bearzinsky,” the tired-eyed man mumbled after him. “Name?”
“Reimer,” he stammered.
“Mrs. Spritz, can you find a file for a Reimer?” the man wheezed.
Blondie looked at the hand-lettered wood sign on his desk: Jacob Clapper. Blondie assumed he was the principal, although he seemed much less powerful than the man who’d brought him here.
Genie-like, a slender frizzy-haired woman appeared, carrying a beige paperboard file in her hand. She flitted about the small room like a hummingbird until Clapper held out his hand. Then she dropped the file into his palm and zipped away.
Clapper opened the folder and took out a single sheet of paper. He looked at it for several minutes before murmuring, “Bernard Reimer.”
Blondie twisted in his chair. God, he hated that name. It had to be the all-time nerd name. Luckily, since seventh grade, everyone but his parents and his teachers had called him Blondie.
Clapper cleared his throat and gave him what Blondie supposed he intended as a fatherly look.
“It must be difficult changing schools between your junior and senior years,” Clapper said, mustering a heavy-lidded look of concern, while failing to suppress a yawn.
Blondie set his jaw and fixed his gaze on the balding crown of Clapper’s head.
Clapper coughed. A faint line of spittle appear-ed between his lips.
Don’t choke on me, Blondie silently begged.
Clapper began reciting a litany of school rules. As he went on, his voice wound down like an unplugged phonograph.
“… dressed appropriately and on time,” Clapper intoned as he ground to a halt. His hea
d slumped forward and his eyelids drooped to half-mast. Just when Blondie feared the old man had expired, he drew one more breath and exhaled the name of his assistant.
The bird-lady appeared instantly as if she’d been counting down to Clapper’s finale. She towed Blondie from the office and escorted him down the hall. Ahead was a windowed green door. A muffled pandemonium emanated from it. To Blondie, the sound was a composite of all the fierce epithets and indignant protests of sinners cast into hell. Don’t open that door, lady. He was sure a geyser of gremlins and goblins would explode from the room.
As they drew nearer, however, the sound from the room began to diminish and the harsh tapping from Mrs. Spritz’ wooden-heeled shoes grew louder and louder. By the time she opened the door, shoving Blondie forward by the small of his back, the room was hushed and every eye was upon him.
Blondie’s throat constricted and his stomach rumbled so loudly he was sure it was audible to all. His eyes scanned the room looking for danger, each new face contending for his attention. One arrested his gaze.
It was a face such as he’d never seen on a head such as he’d never seen — the face of a boy-man on a head squeezed from his collarbone, growing larger as it progressed upward. Except for his thick lips and protruding eyes, the boy’s face would have been smooth as a balloon. His nose was almost nonexistent, his ears small and flat, his dark hair parted in the middle and plastered onto his head. His face was pinkish purple, as if from the pressure of whatever filled his head.
This boy-man looked at him. There was no threat to his gaze, no curiosity, no surprise. It was as if he were looking at someone he’d seen many times before.
“Take a seat,” the teacher ordered. Blondie looked her way and was astounded to see a woman as tall as he, an Amazon with equine features. He figured she must have escaped from one of the horse farms that surrounded Fenton.
The woman arched her brows and Blondie realized he hadn’t moved. He followed the angle of her inclined head and began making his way toward the back of the room. He felt the eyes of at least two dozen onlookers scraping his face and setting it ablaze.