Out of the Wilderness

by Steve Stroble

meanings was repeated.

  Sam froze in terror. This was the same nun who had confiscated his radio during the '63 Series. With the game heating up as afternoon class dragged on, Sam had slipped out the small transistor radio, laid it on his desk, turned it on low, put his head on the desk and listened as the Dodgers scored first. Sam quickly relayed the news to Ralph who fired it to Mark who ? Soon the whole class was buzzing with the news that the Dodgers were ahead.

  "Who has the radio?"

  Certain that Sister would turn up the radio so that the whole class could listen Sam sauntered up front where the radio disappeared from his hand into Sister's desk faster than Junior Gilliam starting a double play from third.

  "Hold out your hand."

  The three-foot pointer hit home and stung his pride more than his palm. That incident still burned in his memory, but his friends who continued to smirk, howl and chuckle with each new chorus that included "Fuc cor nostrum" appeared oblivious to the dangers of finding humor at Sister's expense. Sam began to wonder what permanent detention would be like if they were caught.

  Not knowing the importance of destroying the written form of the word, Sam once foolishly wrote it on the top of a math test he had blown. When Mom retrieved the test from his wastebasket and said "What's this?" as she pointed at the four-letter word next to the grade, Sam quickly lied, "It says Tuck. You know. Like Friar Tuck in Robin Hood."

  Because Dave's family was not Catholic, he didn't attend the same school as Sam and had to settle for the firsthand accounts of such adventures.

  "Let me get this right. You're telling me there's bad words in your church language?"

  "Not exactly. Just Latin words that sound like bad words in English."

  "Okay." Dave shrugged. He knew Sam well enough to know that Sam didn't lie about such things. He also appreciated Sam's appreciation of Dave's family.

  "You think your mom might make some more of those things?"

  "The enchiladas, tacos or tostadas?"

  "The ones with the lettuce."

  "Ha, ha. Well that narrows it down to two things!"

  "It doesn't matter. Whatever she makes tastes good."

  Because Dave's older brother Gil played bass in a rock and roll trio, Sam made sure to show up if he knew that they would be practicing. Sam's musical aspirations to this point had consisted of trying to teach himself trombone, getting yelled at by the school band's music instructor for showing up late for practice when the back gate to school was locked, and then pretending to play at the band's one concert that year. But a rock band - that was cool. He didn't understand why they smoked such strange smelling cigarettes, though.

  During one such practice, the three musicians smoked more of the funny smelling cigarettes than usual. Because they kept the window to the small practice room shut and jammed blankets into the bottom of the door, the smoke soon saturated the air and even the two nonsmokers were inhaling unhealthy doses. After a while, Sam began to feel sort of like he had when gluing model cars, planes and monsters driving cars together before Dad had insisted on open windows and doors for such hobbies.

  "I read that it makes kids high!" Dad had warned of the glue fumes. Another time Dad had come home with news about something called LSD. "One guy who took it said he saw God in a flower." This was before LSD was illegal and the doses often were more pure than what was sold later on.

  All such distinctions between chemically induced states were lost on Sam due to his na?ve youthful grasp of such matters. In regard to marijuana, he thought it was just some kind of tobacco favored by musicians. This particular occasion, it looked mostly like buds from a flower being rolled up in the cigarette papers.

  "Yep. Came all the way from Acapulco," Larry, the group's black drummer bragged as he passed the joint to Gil.

  "Now, don't you be holding that thing too long, good buddy," grunted Bob, the group's white guitarist. "Us guitar pickers need some inspiration too."

  "Sheeet," Larry laughed "What you need is to learn to play something besides four/four time. Just how hard is it for you crackers to pick up a little something different, like five/four or seven/eighths time?"

  "Don't start on that again." All the greats - Elvis, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins don't worry about that crap. They just rock their butts off, which is more than I can say for you, Mr. Know-it-all."

  "Yeah, right. Just 'cause I dig jazz and like to jam. Besides, your poor white trash friends ain't so great. All they do is copy Ike Turner, Little Richard, Fats?"

  "Okay, okay Compadres," sighed Gil. He was tiring of the role of the peacemaker between his sullen, hotheaded drummer who loved Miles Davis and John Coltrane and loud mouthed, good old boy guitarist. Both of their parents had come from the South for the defense jobs out West during WW II and stayed. But that was about all they had in common. Larry wanted to play cool jazz; Bob, rockabilly. Gil added a bass beat that was part mariachi and part Mexican folk music. The resulting sound was unlike anything Sam had ever heard - even when they played covers of Top 40 songs. While most groups tried to copy the hits a closely as possible, this band rearranged them so that sometimes only the words to the original sound remained intact, with the rhythm, melody and/or tempo tweaked significantly. They practiced so often that Larry left his drums at Gil's house, only taking them out for gigs the band played.

  "Let's ask him!" Bob pointed at Sam. "What do you younger kids like?"

  "Don't ask him!" griped Larry. "Just another cracker like you."

  "Well, since us crackers make up most of the United States of America, we damn well better find out. Or else we'll never make any records or money doing this. We'll just die a bunch of old winos down on skid row or as old folks watching TV at the rest home."

  "He's right," Larry waved his hands. "What do you like, kid?"

  "Well, ? ah, ? I," Sam hated being the center of attention.

  "He likes KFWB," Dave tried to help his friend.

  "KFWB?" Larry groaned. "That top 40 crap?"

  "Lots of your black brothers and sisters are on there, Larry." Gil pointed out.

  "Yeah, mostly singing some nonsense. Ain't no jazz. Nothing that grooves."

  "What do you like?" Gil turned to Sam.

  "The Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Stevie Wonder?"

  "Fingertips? ? That Stevie kid can wail on harmonica?"

  "How about instrumentals, you know - songs without words?" Larry interrupted Bob.

  "There's not too many of those. What about Telstar or Wipeout?"

  "Wipeout? I ain't playing no surf music, man!" Larry folded his arms.

  "Well, uh?" The secondhand pot smoke was causing time to slow for Sam. "I haven't heard most of the ones that you were talking about before."

  "You never heard of Buddy Holly or Little Richard?"

  "No."

  "Come on, guys. He's at least seven years younger than us." Gil graciously rescued Sam from the spotlight.

  "Hey Dave. Your Mom got anything to eat?" Suddenly Sam felt hungry.

  "Kid's high for sure." Larry snorted. "You been smoking those joints I've been rolling?"

  "Not me," Sam answered. "Gil would kill us if we did. Dave said so."

  "Go on, get something to eat." Gil motioned the two youngsters out of the room. "Okay, let's get back to it."

  Gil began a bass line. Bob joined in with the twangy chords he loved and Larry finally grudging smacked his drums, purposely altering the time just enough to confuse the other two stoned players.

  In the kitchen, Dave found some tortillas and smuggled them by his Mom to the yard where he and Sam ate them on the carefully trimmed lawn.

  "Man, these are good!" Sam crammed three tortillas in his mouth in rapid succession, barely pausing to chew them.

  "Wow, you are high!"

  "What do you mean?"

  "The marijuana made you high."

  "What's marijuana?"

  "It's what they smoke. They say all the bands on the radio smoke it."
>
  "But I didn't smoke any."

  "I guess it works if you just breathe in what's in the air." Dave shrugged. "I've felt dizzy sometimes when they smoke it."

  "Why do they fight so much?"

  Dave sighed. "I don't know. My mom says it's because they're different colors. She says Gil should play with some other Mexicans. My dad says they fight because they're too lazy to work hard and practice.

  "Oh." Sam had heard Dave's dad rant and rave about the lazy people he worked with at the docks where he drove a forklift.

  "It doesn't matter what color they are!" he would yell after a long day. "They love the union because then they get to goof off all day. Maybe if they got fired, the boss would give us who work a raise. But the union gets everyone a raise - even those lazy cacas who don't work!"

  Frustrated, Dave's dad tried to build a taste for honest work into his five children, even interrogating their friends who came to his home. Sam had been questioned the first time he had come to Dave's house.

  "What does your father do?"

  "He works for the military as an advisor to some aerospace company. He says they're going to send someone to the moon."

  "The moon? Sounds like they believe that Kennedy guy in Washington. What do you do?"

  "I go to school."

  "No, no. What kind of work?"

  "Oh, I have to feed our cats and take out the trash.

  "Hmm. That's good. Too many lazy kids these days. Don't do nothing. Just want to get stoned on beer and smoke their dope and watch TV. What a mess! Lazy cacas!"

  3

  Fortunately, or in some ways unfortunately, the work ethic generated by his dad drove Dave to find ways to earn money; some legitimate,