Life - Part Two
Chapter 4: Flashbacks -
Growing Up in Suburbia
Born Charles Harkens Ash, 1950 in humdrum postwar Baltimore, I came to this life from all life before, in the stream of all life hereafter...
How grandiose: how humble. Here I sit, ensconced in my study, in the end; though the end is not yet here. My story presumes that I came to this place somewhat by choice; and that this place was worth the choosing, better than all that I rejected. Fate, too, had a hand in the choosing; and at every point, I had to know, though I couldn't know, the wisdom of my choice. The first requirement was self-awareness, and this began at the age of eight.
I'm in the study even though it's a fine spring day - reasoning that I'm no longer in the springtime of my life and I have a long story to tell before dead winter comes. Sharon is in the garden and Eddie, my eight-year-old son, is playing quietly with a train set on the floor beside me as I write.
At eight I had my first vision of self: a day that lingers with the smell of baby-powder and steamy air from a bath. I stand full-length naked in the mirror in my parent's bedroom, my bean-pole image large as life, thinking: that's me! Me there, me here - an alive being, unique unto myself - I am.
It was a quantum shift, a growth of consciousness both subtle and profound. Still, it was a time of innocence. These days that seems like a contradiction. Not then. I became a dreamy, contented nine-year-old. I sat up in my apple tree, one of my apple trees, watching the world go by: the cars in the street far around to the front of the white clapboard house. My Irish setter with head down sniffing for rabbits; the corn growing in the large backyard garden. Somewhere in the neighborhood other dogs barked, other kids called out. My own little sister was in the house, I figured finishing off the peanut butter cookies. That was all right - I still had crumbs in my mouth from my last one, my fair share - and I had apples at hand. Not quite ripe yet - but I liked them as well still half-green.
It was a Saturday; school was still two days away, a world away. My father was - I don't know where. My mother, in the house. Big brother and sister Dwight and Celia, out running around with their teenaged friends.
Me, I was in the middle of things, alone, unconcerned. My family had moved to a little town, Oakland, in the Allegheny Mountains. There was probably a Pirate game on - maybe I'd go in and fiddle with the rabbit ears on the TV to cut the fuzz enough to watch it. I knew nothing about the move that would send our family to New York in the coming year. I was nine.
I waited a while, chewed the pithy dry bark of twig my apple had brought with it. It's what happens when you pick them too early.
My little sister, Wanda, came out of the house, looked around as if looking for me, her cheeks bulging with cookie. She wanted to rub it in. I was beyond all that, any more. I listened to the faint breeze stir the branches, the rustling corn. I could almost smell that corn, its dark lush green.
Wanda didn't see me. She picked a dart off the house and flung it at the board, missed and sent it with a thunk to joint he pockmarked galaxy around the target. No fun alone - she went back in. Probably to watch cartoons.
Now I'd have a heck of a time getting her away from the TV if I wanted to watch the Pirates game. But I didn't anyway. Maybe I'd go over to George's. He'd probably have Trix for supper again, like last time: a multi-colored feast for a kid like me. Kid? Sure I was, in no danger of losing that, any time soon.
Sock hops, record collections, driving - all that stuff could wait. The oil spots I could smell in the dust from the alley were as close as I needed to be to that stuff, yet. I leaned back into the gently yielding branches and gazed up at the sky, the fluffy white clouds drifting far away.
Where did it get me, this glorious human attribute, self-consciousness? Right here and now, I suppose. Certainly nowhere else, except in retrospect: where I might have gone, and where I passed along the way.
In that first flush of independence, I go out on my bicycle, to visit a friend who lives out of town. It's a few miles, down the main highway winding out of Oakland, into fields. It's a fine Saturday morning. The crickets are chirping in the dry, yellow-brown grass that's waving in a light breeze. The high blue sky sends small puffy clouds scouting ahead of me. I follow them, pedalling like mad to get up a good head of steam, then coast out on the clear smooth black asphalt beyond the lot with the deserted gas station, into the country of sparse ranch houses, the wall of fall-colored forest on one side, thick and mysterious, the open rolling pastureland opposite that stretches all the way to the smoky low mountains in the distance. A little creek runs beside me. Halfway to my friend's house I stop for a drink. A crayfish creeps out of my way. Later we'll come to the creek to hunt them with a BB gun. For now they can live; I have nothing to prove except my freedom. Back on the bike seat, my jeans flapping around my ankles, my father's officer's cap low over my eyes, I head out again. Cars pass by. I look at the driver's eyes; he notices me; he must think, "Wow, look that kid's riding out here, going somewhere all on his own!" I had my father's knapsack on my back, with a snack, and a little book I might stop and read if I wanted a rest. My battered sneakers whirled on the pedals. I cruised. Around the winding ribbon of road, miles out past the town to the ranch house where my friend lived, the number I remembered: 1447. I leaned my bike over against the mailbox, walked up the driveway and knocked on the aluminum screen door. The mother, wearing those pointy-ended glasses so popular then, and short curly blond hair, held the door open for me. I stepped in. My friend was watching cartoons: my favorite, that I could hardly ever get on our TV at home: Caspar the Friendly Ghost. Here it was crystal clear, and better yet, in color. . . .
These were clear moments of self-awareness and freedom. Increasingly they were colored by compromise: school, disappointment, conflict. Little Charlie was swept along in currents beyond his control. Going to school was the first, and worst, shock. I didn't want to go. I was happy enough to sit at home in front of the TV set watching Ding Dong School, in which Miss Ding Dong would introduce me to big words like "scissor" and "dozen." Even the infantile Romper Room was better than the monolothic Roland Park school, with its towering dark walls and labyrinthine halls, its ancient, hag-like teachers - my kindergarten teacher had my mother in her class in this very school thirty years ago.
But it's difficult now to pinpoint the reason why I didn't want to go. Was it the warm milk from cartons, the enforced naps on reed mats on the floor? Milling around in crowds, or lining up; having to raise my hand and be recognized before I could go to the bathroom? Maybe it was the putrid cafeteria, that I remember for the day I puked at the sight and smell of the liverwurst sandwich being eaten by the little girl next to me. In any case, when the car pool station-wagon arrived honking outside the house, I kicked and screamed and flatly refused to go. "In that case," my mother responded (for she was not about to tie her life down any longer than five years, prince or no prince), "you can stay in your room all day." One more taste of solitary on the following day was enough for me; I was back on the road to school, and all that followed.
What followed soon after was the first move I actually remember, when my father was promoted by Esso to a district sales position in far-flung Garrett County. I didn't want to go. I was perfectly happy where I was. An album snapshot shows me standing outside the ivy-covered, brick row house on Wickford Road in Baltimore, with our new Irish setter Bridget beside me, next to a "For Sale" sign.
Young Charlie delighted in his discovery of the Alleghenies, Maryland's version of mountains. It was also his first real taste of country life, besides a dimly-remembered trip to the old family farm "down home" in southern Maryland where he could recall the smell of curing tobacco and the thrill of seeing watermelons thrown bursting to the hungry pigs.
Situated beyond Cumberland's coal fields and between the mining of western Pennsylvania and West Virginia, Oakland was surrounded by woods, farms, lakes and rolling mountains. Here, where the car radio rang with the rolling staccato of the tobacco auctioneers, there were state parks lush with waterfalls, open fields jumping with grasshoppers, creeks alive with crayfish, salamanders and frogs. It was here, between the ages of six and nine, that Charlie learned to explore the world: to hunt turkey and deer in the coattails of his father; to bicycle alone for miles on the winding country roads; to climb apple trees and help with the vegetable garden.
In Oakland Charlie's early-childhood passion for trains gave way to war games. His fancy was fed by Walter Cronkite's dramatized narration of wartime scenes on TV's Air Power - where he saw his father's deadly bombers in action. The complete array of toy trains gave way to toy soldiers, machine guns, tanks. Charlie and his friends roamed the town and surrounding fields, crouching, stalking, taking cover, shooting and being shot, taking prisoners and locking them up in garages. They swarmed over the field gun on the courthouse lawn. They took refuge in the swamp outside of town - until they discovered, with dawning horror, that the putrid mass of yellowish "mud" was graced with shreds of toilet paper; that the swamp was no swamp but a municipal cesspool.
On another foray out of town, in the cow pastures by the National Guard Armory, Charlie and a friend, George Carver, were ambushed by a couple of older boys with BB guns. The innocent boys with their toy guns could hardly believe those dull, distant pops were aimed at them. But George was hit in the chest; with an ugly bump the size of a BB raised directly over his heart. He took a second shot in the face, that raised a second lump over his eye. Charlie was luckier and wasn't hit. They beat a hasty retreat with their useless toy rifles.
Some, Charlie would learn, played even more deadly games. Bridget, the Ashes' lovable, arthritic Irish setter, has been depositing too much dog-doo on Mr. Schwartzentrooper's lawn. So their good neighbor feels it somehow necessary to call the sheriff. The sheriff arrives at the door, asking for the dog. (Meanwhile Charlie's at school, innocently drawing cartoons of fighter planes in battle, while the abduction takes place). Charlie's mother puts up a fuss, but this time her fabled lip gets her nowhere. The lawman leashes the cringing setter and drives her out to the town dump, where he pumps six shots into her. (Or so an informant tells Mrs. Ash, as word gets around quickly in a small town.)
Charlie hears the news when he comes home from school. He is shattered, enraged, in shock and grief. The sheriff! This is justice at work? Cold-blooded murder!
Stephen King, Charlie would learn much later, had a name for people like that: "the Dallas Police."
1960 found the Ashes in a new location, a posh suburb of New York. Charlie's father was moving up in the world of oil. Ten-year-old Charlie bravely rooted for his old hometown team, the Baltimore Orioles, as they mounted a futile challenge to Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Whitey Ford and the Yankees. No matter. The National League champion Pirates would take care of the damn Yankees in the World Series with a miracle home run by Bill Mazeroski.
Charlie shared a growing passion for sports with new friends. Sometimes the passions got out of hand. During a spirited backyard game of croquet, best friend Lindsay came at him swinging a mallet and Charlie took the wise course: he ran. The argument over a disputed rule passed; they remained friends.
But triangles could be more complicated:
"C'mon, Craig, let's go outside now." Lindsay pulls the drawstring tight on his marble bag and stands up. Craig follows suit and starts to trail our stocky leader out the door of Craig's bedroom, casting a sheepish glance at Charlie. Charlie is left to pick up the marbles which he's just won. What, he wonders, I didn't cheat - what's the problem?
"Hey, wait a sec," Charlie says; "I'm coming too." He hurriedly grabs at the marbles scattered on the floor.
"C'mon, Craig," Lindsay repeats, sneering at Charlie from the doorway.
"Aw, don't be a poor loser, Lindsay. I just - "
"Look. We're just going outside. All right?"
"But hey, wait a minute. I came over to play with Craig, too."
"I was here first. C'mon, Craig."
Charlie's eyes start to burn. He lurches to his feet, sending marbles skittering away.
"Wait!" His voice starts to break. "Why don't you wait for me? You guys . . . Craig?" He rushes to the door. They're halfway down the hall.
Craig pauses, turns and finally says, "Lindsay and I just want to play together now."
That's not good enough of an explanation for Charlie. Now his back is up over an injustice. "But why?"
"Just - " Craig begins, in a soft voice; then Lindsay finishes - "just because."
"But why!" Charlie demands, shouting now, nearly crying openly.
They walked out, down the steps and out the front door. Charlie followed, leaving the loose marbles behind, clutching the rest in his little leather pouch. The more he persisted, the more they resisted. He finally gave up, livid with frustration and rage, and walked home fighting the tears.
Charlie's mother's advice was to let it go, to accept that that was just what his friends wanted to do at the time and there was no sense fighting it. At the time, Charlie struggled to understand, tried to accept. It didn't work. He wasn't quite ready.
But he had other horizons to explore, other challenges ahead. Once more his father was transferred, and Charlie had to pull up shallow roots and move on. He was learning some lessons over and over again, becoming accustomed to constant moves, transitory friendships, revolving schools. While he lacked the security of a long-lasting gang of friends, he learned to appreciate, instead, the virtues of adapatability and acceptance.
Sometime after the move, Charlie's brother Dwight pulled him aside during a family argument - some trivial matter that all families bicker about, like who gets how many cookies, or watches what TV show when . . . but the point is, it doesn't matter. This is the message Dwight got across to Charlie, telling him gently, assuringly:
"Charlie, look. Look at what you're saying, what you're getting so upset about. Is it really all that important?" It was a revelation to Charlie, his first glimpse at the mystical peace of the egoless universe. Oh, yeah. (Stand back.) Ah. (Breathe . . .).
Later Charlie would pass on this knowledge to his bucktoothed little sister Wanda. After, say, leaving her with less than her share of the cookies.
Charlie learned acceptance well. Virtue carried to excess becomes a vice, however; and as every teenager knows, there comes a time when blind obedience to fate or human authority works no longer. When fate would assign Charles Ash military draft number forty-two, for instance, he would have to find a loophole in the closing net of circumstance through which to wriggle free. The time of decision comes again and again, from minor matters to the change of mate or career. Each time a choice opens, you stand at the crux of a dilemma: to burst through like a back through a hole in the line - or to skirt sideways, not committing, waiting for another chance . . . . Either way, there is possible daylight - or the tackling crowd.
Eleven, like the idyllic age of eight before it, is an age happily free of major decisions, a luxurious time of life. When the time came to move, there was no question. In fact Charlie thanked his stars for the early reprieve from a full-year sentence under sixth grade's dreaded Mrs. Cohen, and he looked forward to his first plane ride, the jet to Atlanta.
The New South was bustling with economic expansion; also with widespread Civil Rights activism by blacks unwilling to settle any longer for less than their share of the American freedom-pie. While Atlanta was not a prime focus of the racial unrest, it did serve as the magnet of the new money. The red Georgia clay was being feversihly scoured for suburban sprawl. Housing developments and shoping centers were sprouting like kudzu out of the impoverished countryside. Tenneco Oil took part in the general corporate boom downtown, locating a new regional head office in Atlanta.
Charlie's parents bought an antique-brick, colonial-style house in one of the brand new neighborhoods north of the city. The house was so new, there was no grass yet on the lawn - just red, rocky soil. Behind the house were dense pine woods, stretching, more or less undisturbed, all the way to Stone Mountain.
Exploring his new surroundings, Charlie hiked up onto a ridge from where he could see the monolith in the distance, connected to him by a solid path of treetops. It loomed up on the horizon, beckoning like some ancient god, or mutely shrugging like some gray Civil War monument, depending on one's belief system. Being only eleven at the time, Charlie was merely drawn to it, wondering how long it would take to trek there. An afternoon? A week? . . . Anyway, not today.
Charlie was almost a teenager and there would be more interesting, more social ways to spend his time. Hours on the telephone flirting with Phyllis, Sandy and Denise. Or playing kickball with them on the vacant lot. Riding the bus with them downtown to wait six hours in line for a Beach Boys concert. (They still ended up in the balcony; but the girls screamed like all fourteen-year-olds in the time of Beatlemania.) Charlie and friends swam together, drank cokes together, played water polo and Risk at the the neighborhod pool. They learned to dance together. It was all good clean fun, right down to the stolen kisses, the first tentative petting.
With the boys Charlie still played baseball, football and basketball, and joined a junior bowling league. They also competed for the most authentic Beatle haircut. He and Mark Hansard would go on splurges together to spend their lawn-mowing money; they'd buy James Bond or Tarzan books, and the latest hit singles. The cult of Davy Crockett was long gone; Elvis was threatening to join him in Hula-Hoop land; "playing army" was no longer in vogue. At least Charlie and his immediate friends had moved on to other interests. Not so with certain army-career types he met in the Boy Scouts, with their buck knives, crew cuts and surplus fatigues. Charlie enjoyed that particular diversion for a while, to take advantage of the odd camping trip; but when the chase for merit badges got too serious he opted out.
He hadn't yet heard of the Gulf of Tonkin. He was too young, or too preoccupied, to take seriously the threat to world survival when Kennedy outbluffed Kruschev in that game of nuclear chicken called the Cuban Missile Crisis. No, Charlie's wars were fueled with spitballs, his battles fought on suburban lawns and vacant lots in the form of after-school sports.
There were always two worlds beckoning to him there, in that neighborhood: the opulent, white-columned facade of the ersatz mansion, the country club his parents joined, the lawns he mowed, the shiny new schools he attended, the neighborhood pool parties and ball games . . . and the view out back, beginning with the glade with its bed of soft pine needles where Charlie and Wanda would camp or play football, one on one. The clearing faded mysteriously into dreamy forest, where he would stumble upon a decaying and overgrwon plantation, a pond he would fish with his father, and, a little farther on, Barfield Road.
Charlie only glimpsed this long, straight, gravel road once or twice, as he stepped tentatively out of the cover of trees. It was lined with a string of shanties. This was the Negroes' road - the Negroes that never appeared on the front side of the house. But lying awake late on a Saturday night, Charlie would hear the gravel roar with their drag races - roars that were muffled by the thick Georgia woods that stood between us.
In sixth grade in the new school that he walked to via a shortcut in the woods past Barfield Road, Charlie was quickly introduced to "current events": newspaper reprints about Civil Rights actions all over the South. The South was rising again - but this time in blackface. Atlanta was spared the more dramatic shootings and bombings. But in 1964, Lester Maddox, a restaurant owner who would later become state governor, stood on an Atlanta street selling axe-handles to symbolize, and to enforce, his supposed right to bar blacks from his restaurant.
Eventually - inevitably, perhaps, the day came when Charlie locked horns with the black boys from Barfield Road - a chance meeting in the woods that developed into a righteous rockfight. It began one autumn day when Charlie and Mark Hansard were idly hiking around, kicking up piles of dead leaves, exploring new territory like a couple of young dogs. They heard voices - different voices. They looked around and saw dark figures darting along a ridge. Something whizzed and struck with a plupf into the leaves at Mark's feet.
"Hey, come on," Mark said, his hackles up. He was a chunky, solid character, in the latter stages of puberty. Only a few high cracks remained over a deepened voice: "They're throwing rocks: let's get em." The white boys' first throws were short. But the return fire perked up the interest of the fleeing strangers. They doubled back behind the ridge and lobbed a volley of stones over Charlie's head, from out of view. They could be heard shouting. More boys appeared from the direction of Barfield Road, big brothers, little brothers. Charlie and Mark retreated to within earshot of their paved suburban road. They saw Jimmy Moore on his bike.
"Hey Jimmy!" Charlie yelled. "We got a rockfight in here. Need some help, there's a bunch of em. See who you can round up, quick!"
A rock skimmed clear out onto the pavement behind Jimmy's rear wheel. He pedalled away, fast, shouting "Okay, you got it!"
Charlie and Mark stole back into the wooks, using trees for cover and forcing back the more adventurous snipers. In short order they had an all-out fracas, a gang of a dozen on the white side, with half again as many on the black - counting the little ones. Charlie's side aimed for the bigger boys.
Their hearts pounded in this fashion for an hour or so, until their pitching arms grew too weary to carry on. The black boys melted back into the trees, their jabbering voices fading.
The white boys took stock. There were no serious injuries on either side, as far as they could tell, no significant ground gained or lost. The two stone-wielding armies drifted back to our separate worlds, never to meet again . . . except, that is, for the hair-raising hike Charlie dreamed that night: with Mark again, in those same, deep woods . . . where on dry leaves suddenly stands a boot, and higher up, big black hands holding an axe - was he grim-faced, or smiling? Charlie never saw his face.
In 1965 Charlie's father lost his executive's job and the Ashes drove back, tail between their legs, to Baltimore, to a brick wilderness of rowhouses all the same. Charlie had no contact with any old friends, nine years after the Ashes' last residence there. So that first summer, while Mr. Ash began looking for work, Charlie contented himself with learning to play lacrosse - a legendary sport he'd always identified with his home town, but never seen. He had a fence on a back alley to use as a target, endless hours to practice, and an old stick given him by a new brother-in-law. Sister Celia had the good sense to marry an All-American lacrosse player and settle in Baltimore; so Charlie now had the good fortune to benefit not only from big Bob's stick, but from private tutorials.
Charlie's good fortune did not last through the next summer. He was turning sixteen, and his parents said he had to find a summer job. His father had found work by then. And though Charlie was attending a private, Quaker school to accommodate an academic history scrambled by too many moves, the tuition was covered by a scholarship. So it wasn't the money. It was an obligation of manhood.
Charlie fumed and despaired, argued and cried, wondered what in the world he would do. How could he find a job in a still-unfamiliar city, with no connections, no experience, no skills? Up to that point he'd only mowed lawns, raked leaves. His parents - and they were together on this raw new deal - suggested Charlie hit the pavement until something turned up.
So he walked the hot streets of the seedy Hamden district knocking on doors. It didn't look like any business there could operate with a margin for a new salary, even at a bargain rate. Charlie was not confident to begin with; and after a few dozen grizzled old shopkeepers had scowled at his fresh, peach-fuzzed face, told him to speak up (with my thin cracking voice) and then sent him on his way, he had no hope at all. But finally a little humpbacked man with a weasel smile hired him to stock shelves and clean cages at a pet store a block from home. Charlie would make a dollar twenty-five an hour.
That summer, 1966, saw Charlie's love affair with the Baltimore Orioles finally blossom into full glory. Until then his ongoing interest in the Birds had been little more than a casual, token relic of his past, which he'd held onto as a symbol of home through his wanderings up to the barbarous Empire State and down to the bush leagues of Georgia. In December of the year of his return, Baltimore traded for Frank Robinson and thus sealed their chances of becoming World Champions. They beat the Dodgers in four straight, a stunning result that shocked the sporting world. When the World Series was won, it was as if Charlie's ambitions in Baltimore were fulfilled; for it was time to hit the road again.
But not before a lightning bolt of reality struck home. A middle-aged member of the Friends Meeting associated with Charlie's school rode to Washington one day, an hour's drive. He carried with him a can of gasoline and a pack of matches. He was concerned that no one in the in the death-dealing machinery of our government was listening to the rising tide of protest over the war in Vietnam. They wouldn't even admit it was war - it was still only a "conflict." But Buddhist monks there were dying in self-lit flames, to send a message to the world. And this man's inner light responded. He sat down on a street in the nation's capital, soaked himself with gasoline, and lit a match.
Charlie is entering the adult world, slowly but surely. The great rite of passage, high school graduation, looms closer. By the time it arrives his family has moved west, or at least mid-west, to a suburb of Chicago.
Everything that has gone before is a fog now, drifting away through the years. For now the moment is all: poised between past and future. In the gleam of a vapor lamp, three man-boys on a painted log in a park, on graduation night. The hum of a transformer, somewhere overhead; closer in, the sound of Stevie's lips sucking on the bottle.
"Ahhh. Good scotch, man."
"Yeah, my dad was pretty decent to get it for us." Already Bruce's hair is thinning, black strands swept over a domed forehead like his father's; his is a middle-aged paunch, at eighteen. Mr. Jensen sells refrigerators.
Stevie fondles the ritual object of green glass, observing: "Cutty Sark. Look at that ship. Just imagine, a hundred years ago we might be getting ready to set out on the high seas on a ship like that, ready to seek our fortune."
"Give me a break," Bruce says. "We'd be sitting in this park just like this, guzzling some rotgut, thinking of our next lay."
There is some truth in this, as they have spent much of the first half of the bottle reminiscing about the nights cruising at McDonalds for "prospects," wondering how things might be different if we'd been bolder with this or that "chick." These young men don't actually call them "chicks," themselves, but use the term in quotes, in mockery of their less enlightened peers.
"Same old subject . . ." Charlie chimes in, adding a comment on the irony of their present scene, Prospect Park. His friends smile their grudging agreement. Charlie thinks of suggesting they go back to Stevie's for a few games of pong and some tunes, but when he gets up to stretch his long, spindly legs and wobble in the dark soupy night he thinks of his parents, all their parents there in that house, and decides they're better off where they are, in their commiseratory state of limbo.
There is nothing for it but to continue. Charlie sits back down on the log, reaching for the bottle from Stevie, who sits, fittingly, between him and Bruce. Stevie is the middleman, who's best friends to both Bruce and Charlie. "So, Stevie, on the subject of prospects, I guess the odds are in your favor now."
The shyest one, with a bushy shock of unruly hair, craggy nose and boyish glint in the eyes, Stevie flashes a look of uncertain pride - "Wh-what d'ya mean?"
"Well, going to a co-ed school and all." He's on his way to Lawrence U., while Bruce and Charlie are both, by coincidence, headed for the austere wilds of all-male Dartmouth.
"I don't know," Bruce breaks in. "That recruiting guy said girls are no problem where we're going. They bus them in from all over New England. Parties in every frat house . . ."
"Yeah," Stevie says, wistfully.
Charlie takes another swig from the bottle and passes it to Bruce's reaching hand. The raw, peaty stuff still burns going down. Charlie takes a deep breath, trying to hold his equilibrium. A little cooling breeze cuts through the heavy, humid June night; the pungent aroma of Scotch gives way to - "the green grass of youth" is how Charlie perceives it.
Stevie says with obviously furring tongue, "So y're givin' up on old M.P., then, Bruiser?"
Bruce snaps his head around from under the bottle and glares at him with a pair of glassy eyes. "Whadya mean?"
"You're not gonna make your move on 'er this summer?"
"Maybe I will and maybe I won't. There're plenty of fish in the sea."
"Same old story," Stevie says. "Paper lines from paper men. You guys, we need to make resolutions o' steel for a change. Gimme some of that scotch."
Paper activities, the young philosophers agreed in their boozy analysis that night, included such former pastimes as playing hearts or even poker at Patrick's; obvious shams like the Young Republicans' picnics; and unsuccessful cruising strategies. In the latter category they put prospects who were, at best, undesireable: Young Republican picnickers, for example, from Naperville; ones in '61 Chevys or '57 Cadillacs; or any group packed 3-6 to a vehicle. The most flimsy paper strategy held that subtlety works.
Steel activities, on the other hand, were largely action-based. They could play sports (softball, whiffleball, touch football, ping-pong); go into Chicago to see the Cubs or the Sox, or to the Oak St. beach (where last time they'd had the good fortune to stumble onto a photo-party for the Playboy Bunnies); go see the movie The Graduate again. More passive, but still meaningful pursuits, included listening to music (the Doors, Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Wilson Pickett); reading incisively honest books - like Catch-22 and Catcher in the Rye - that exposed the facade of duty to paper authority and its values; or talking about their own philosophies of life.
For instance, cruising, when properly conducted, could be a steel rather than a paper activity. But the paper strategy, subtlety, had to be discarded. The sights were set higher, so that, at worst, the prospects were unattainable. Realistic steel prospects would be driving sporty jobs like '68 Camaros or '66 Corvairs or Mustangs, approachable in pairs. At the end of the steel road was the golden vision: the Lasting Relationship.
Now their last summer together, at least, was plotted out. The rest of their lives would have to wait.
At summer's end, what was paper and what was steel wouldn't matter anymore; it would all be past:
. . . the grad train to the Wisconsin dells, with its throbbing echoes of the school rock band's rendition of "Lucy in the Sky" in the dance car while Charlie played poker in the coach to escape from his boring date, Geraldine the fat twin sister of his first Hinsdale friend and initate wino, Jake . . .
. . . the painful memories of Bobby Kennedy's shooting in the California Presidential primary, King's assassination before that, and the quitting of President Johnson. Already a year gone, the flower days of Haight Ashbury, the flames of Detroit . . . and Charlie's blissful summer of '67 with Cindy Chapman, who gave him "carte blanche" - and Charlie didn't even take full advantage of the menu . . .
. . . still fresh, the turmoil of the Democratic Convention, the "police riot" in the Chicago streets. So close and yet, removed from the comfort of the suburbs, so far away. Charlie would work for his token share of college expenses in a ladies' shoe store in the Oakbrook mall, pushing handbags and protective sprays along with the latest styles. He'd wear a suit and sell on commission, hustling, smiling at the pretty young women.
With some of his earnings Charlie would buy a plastic portable stereo and a hot new double album in a psychedelic silver cover, Cream's "Wheels of Fire." But he'd still be a "straight arrow," living up to his parents' expectations, planning to be a lawyer. Was there any other choice? He was going into the real, the adult world. That's what real adults did: sold refrigerators (like Bruce's dad) or insurance (like Stevie's dad) or oil (like my dad); or they were doctors or dentists (like my mother wanted me to be); or, they were lawyers (who sorted out everyone else's problems and brought justice to the world - and made a pretty fair wage in the bargain). No, for Charlie the choice was obvious.
"You okay, now?"
Charlie was puking his guts out, right there on "the green grass of youth," where they'd played whiffleball and touch football together; right under the vapor lamp and the humming transformer. Dogs from the encircling streets were pricking up their nostrils and ears and starting to bark.
"Yeah, fine, I guess. Least this way I won't be as hung over tomorrow." A weak smile.
"Somehow," Bruce said, looking at the empty bottle in his hand, "I don't feel like carrying this into the house with us." So he heaved it into the middle of the field, where it landed with a muffled thud - unbroken and, for now, unseen.
There was nothing left to do but stumble back to Stevie's house, where Bruce's parents, and Charlie's were waiting indulgently to drive the boys home.
