Things Were Really Moving

My banishment from Tommy's trailer park was more a blessing than a curse in most ways.  Tommy came out to the little cracker box house I was living in with my father, but it was no worse than staying where he was, so there was that.  We played guitars and wrote songs and began to read The Hobbit, the first time Tommy had ever read anything, I think.  But he was enamored of the story as was I, set as it was in a mythical world of adventure where anything was possible.  We both longed for escape from the lives we led, and the stories helped  

One of the things it gave us was a fascination with pipes.  It was the silliest dumb thing we ever did, but we went to a tobacco store downtown and learned about what made a good pipe, how the shapes and sizes made a difference, what was good wood and how it cooled the smoke.  We bought books about pipes and pipes themselves and settled on smoking Balkan Sobranie, a Turkish tobacco that had been cured over slowly smoldering camel dung to give it a distinct flavor.  Like Bilbo and Gandalf, we sat with our pipes, reading The Hobbit, then the trilogy.  

There was a benefit, though.  I quit smoking cigarettes.  

I made new friends at school, too.  There were some smart kids who were emerging from the crowd, kids drawn to the ideologies, kids challenging the status quo, "disestablishmentarians" as we had recently learned.  They were outsiders by choice, social rebels, outcasts, Quixotes, perhaps, fighting the dumb rules of law with deviant and sometimes outrageous behavior.  It was fun.  The dangers were different than those associated with the half-wit brutes and quick criminals I had only half-voluntarily grouped myself with in the past.  Actually, there seemed to be no danger at all.  We followed Thoureauvian dictums of social disobedience, willing to accept the consequences of our very public actions.  I led a walkout of the student government elections, for we had evidence that the results were fixed by the administration.  In the middle of the Vice-Principal's address, we stood up and walked out of the gym, gathering to sit beneath the flagpole at the school's epicenter until the fiasco was over.  Next period, we were all called into the principals office, but he was an older hipster, a fairly famous figure in jazz music who had his own syndicated radio show.  Why he was a high school principal was a mystery to us, but he was rarely there, so it must have been a good gig for him.  And when he had us all gathered, he simply listened to our complaints good-naturedly and sent us all back to class.  No harm, no foul, we guessed, feeling as if we had really done something though we had not changed the outcome of the election.  But we had made a stand and we felt good about it.  And so did the best of our teachers.  

The annual school play was upon us, and Jill was preoccupied and nervous.  She was a first year teacher, young, and perhaps too much identified with the students for some of the other teacher's sensibilities, but we all loved her and saw her as a champion.  I wanted to do something for her, to win her attention.  She had mentioned once that she liked to drink Cold Duck.  I had no idea what it was, but I got someone to buy a bottle for me and I put it in my car and took it to with me on Friday.  The play was that night, so after school, I rushed to my car and then to her room, waiting long enough for all the other students to leave, hoping to catch her alone.  She was packing up her things when I walked in with the bag in my hand.  

When she looked up, I could see the distraction in her eyes.  My coming had not the impact I had hoped for, and suddenly I felt a foolishness, felt myself a boy on an impossible mission standing before a real woman, a teacher, someone whose life was far beyond what I could imagine.  Even  before I spoke, I could see that everything was unfolding awkwardly, not at all like the half-imagined scene that brought me here, a golden moment bathed in gauze and soft light.  

"Hi," I said.  I could hear my voice, cracking, adolescent.  The floor began to sway beneath my feet in growing waves.   Vertigo overtook me.  I felt panic and a growing nausea.  "I brought you something for good luck tonight." 

I thrust the bottle before me, holding it by the neck in the twisted, brown paper bag.  

Her eyes grew large as she looked toward the door uncertain of what to do.  She opened the bag just a bit and peaked in.  

"Oh," she said with half a start.  "This is my favorite.  But you shouldn't have brought this here," she managed, quickly putting it out of site.  "But thank you," she said, more warmly now that the evidence was hidden.  "How did you know I liked Cold Duck."  

"You said so one day," I proffered, not knowing what else to say, just standing there, looking at her, hoping she would do something but not knowing what.  

"Well thank you," she said, touching me on the shoulder and kissing my cheek.  "It was really sweet.  Are you coming tonight?"  

Yes, yes, I would be there.  What else was there in life now.  I would come to see Jill and to watch her favorite play, The Fantastics.  I'd never been to a play before.  Things, it seemed, were really moving.