Chapter XXXXII: I Wanna Go Back

Chapter Forty-Two: I Wanna Go Back

Piper went to work early the next the morning. The sun had hardly risen above the trees and he was getting dressed.
“Don't tell me you get up every day at this hour,” I said with a pillow over my head.
“Work is work,” Piper responded as he tugged his shoes on. “I produce so I can consume.”
“There should be law,” I groaned. “No one should get up before noon.”
“There's a reason the clock has all those numbers on it, Oggy.”
“Right. So I can count the hours I’ve been asleep.”
Piper started to say something fatherly, but stopped himself and tucked his pants into his socks so the bike chain wouldn’t catch it. I shook my head under the pillow.
“I can't believe you've joined the Dark Side, Piper. When do they let you take the leash off?”
“It isn't a leash, Oggy. Just because I work doesn't mean I'm a slave.”
This revelation got me to peek from beneath the pillow with one shadowed eye.
“Back up, Piper. Slaves worked. You work. Ergo...”
“Ergo I get paid and I buy pizza and guitar strings and books,” He said. “Do I look like I'm being whipped?”
“It isn't even nine o'clock, Piper. How can you get up now? You must be whipped. Are you on work release?”
Piper then pulled out the big guns.
“What would John Galt say? Would John Galt sleep in until noon every day?”
John Galt, the hero of Atlas Shrugged, was Piper's answer to everything. Galt's accomplishment was inventing an engine that ran on static energy absorbed from the air. But he had abandoned the engine rather than allow scum like me to benefit from it. Believe me, it was very heavy stuff and made the fact that I read the book between smoking joints and playing Hacky Sack with the Hedonizers one of those life ironies you look back on and laugh at. The mistake I made was telling him that I read the book when I was in Florida. Of course he had already read it and some lively discussions ensued. But now he was using it against me, clearly as an agent of the state.
“John Galt had something to do everyday. That's the difference between me and John Galt. He could do things, make shit, invent machines. I'm the John Galt of leisure. What do I do?”
“You tell me.”
“I try to win the '86 Series. I draw. I listen to music. See? All that can wait until noon.”
“Then sleep. I'm not saying you should get up.”
It was too late. I was awake.
“Look what you did. I'm up and awake and I can't do anything. I don't even have the Game Six tape. God, what I wouldn't do to watch that game right now. Piper, Keith Hernandez was so upset when he made the second out. Because he knew he had lost. He knew the dream was over. That was my dream and he was giving it to me. Here, Oggy, enjoy. That's what he said, but Carter got a hit. Why didn't Sambito pitch to Hernandez?”
“Ask Sticky. I'm gone.”
“But what can I do? I haven't been up this early since I slept in a bus station.”
“Go for a walk. Wear my coat and go across the street. There's a forest with trails. Take my bike. Enjoy.”
Piper was right; I needed to start my trip with a different mental direction, a new outlook on baseball and music. If that meant something as radical as getting out of bed--or off an inflatable pad on the floor--then I was ready. So I found myself walking through the forest and fantasizing about Mexico. Lacy would learn to like it. I was, after all, the John Galt of leisure.
The Birch trees had all lost their leaves, but the big storms appeared to have missed Storrs since there was no snow on the ground. I shuffled through a crunchy carpet of audio memories. Bone Harbor may be the busiest nest of landmarks, but nearly everything can set me off. On this morning I heard a host of moments in the leaves, the sound of Fall 1978, the year I moved to Boston to live with my mother was also here. On weekends my father had taken Brooklyn and I on excursions through Lexington, Mass. This was also the sound of 1980, the year we moved back to Bone Harbor where my father had purchased a three-story house. I met Kurt and Cristo again and we stole Pic and Pay shopping carts to ride down the leafy hospital hill. It was the sound of 1981, the Strike year, when we had to play mid-season games ourselves in the Whiffle Ball courts in a 26 team tournament that lasted into October. We brought brooms to sweep out the leaves that blew in from the giant Willow tree by the Junior High School. It was the sound of Halloween 1982 when everyone dressed up like Michael Jackson with sparkle gloves and red leather jackets. Mack Wynter stumbled in the ancient leaf bed near our secret ring of trees on his way to Trick or Treat. His ankle-weak legs flopped for footing in slick leaves before he fell to one knee. Leaves heavy with mud and slicked by sneakers flew toward Cristo and me on the close edge of the circle. Cristo was dressed like E.T. and I wore #8 in tribute to Yaz. It was the sound of 1983 and walking West to school down Elwyn and between Leary field and the Mill Pond Basketball courts. Old Maple trees rained their leaves on my Red Sox hat. The sound of my shuffling feet made it hard to sneak by Chuck and Kevin in their cigarette gloom. It was the sound of 1984 when I went to search for Mack's grave at the South Street Cemetery. A group of younger kids had passed me on the gravel road carrying carved wooden guns, faces covered with paint, aglow with freedom and soldierly heroics. They tromped across the graves and dove over burial plot bars. They were on their way to the woods by the Jones Ave. dump. Did they know that the Jones Road dump had been fenced in and blockaded due to high toxic content? Stupid kids. Dumb kids. Should I tell them or let them find out on their own? They were gone before I could decide. It was the sound of 1985 as I walked south toward High school, past the Edgewood Old Age Home, past the quacking duck pond, through the dense woods where Druggies smoked their joints before school. They jeered as I made my hustle way to Homeroom in new school clothes with sharpened pencils poking from my bag, terrified of the squeak my new sneakers made on the strange hallway tile, blushing at the tall girls with big breasts. It was the sound of 1986. I ran through the same woods past a different set of Druggies dropping acid and drinking whiskey. I was late for homeroom and that would mean I would miss Darcy's grand entrance, but the Red Sox were in the World Series so I didn't care. I waved my giant Red Sox banner before the west facing windows of the school until the Vice-Principal came to get me. October 1986. Full moon over Leary field. Early ice on the South Millpond and fallen leaves. Dwight Evans in his last World Series game.

I limped tiredly through the Connecticut leaves. The weather had turned cold on the shoulders of a wind from the North. I was wearing Piper's coat and hat but felt unprepared for a trip to the market, let alone to Mexico. Because I had envisioned myself in Mexico, I had only brought clothes suitable for the tropical climate. The only cold weather item I had was a Jimmy Buffett tape.
The forest was stripped of all the fluff of summer and fall, bare and fragile, but this made the visibility better and I could see the trail easily. It was characteristic of Piper to suggest a walk through the naked forest, he liked nature at her barest. He liked unfinished woodworking and house frames and wooden figures without function. How could he tolerate me, I wondered? Didn't I have something hidden beneath my Mexican Serape? Wasn't Poncho covered with the absent colors? I suppose he treated me like I treated Cristo; I was one of a few chums from BHHS that still called on him and as long as it was in his interests he would welcome me. Eventually, that would change. I didn't hear High School friends call my father, so why did I think I would be different? Time had worn down mightier mountains than my friendship. Commitments would be made, bigger jobs would be taken. The country was too big and transportation too easy. My trip to Mexico was proof that family and community were held together by a half a gallon of gas. A full tank would put me in a place where no one knew my name. Two or three tanks of gas would put me in a place like Mexico. What of community then?
The white sun of morning blinked between the trees as I walked. I figured I had a seven hours left of daylight. There was still time to abandon my plan to liberate Lacy. I could hitchhike to Florida and hang out on the old India Beach with the other hobos. There was enough time to get a few miles closer to Florida. My stuff? Who cared about it? I could get another violin in Miami. My car was a death trap anyway. How much longer would those brakes last? I'd used glue to keep the piston from falling out of the caliper. I put the sun on my right and started walking south.
Immediately, I was relieved. I felt a great burden lift from my shoulders like when the Berlin Wall was torn down or when The Culture Club released their second album. My important possessions, the only ones I needed were my 1986 Red Sox team photo and my harmonica key chain. John Muir hadn't had much more when he walked the width of America. Thoreau lived like a king with less. I would travel light like Gandhi. I could start over in Florida with Sunny O'Neil as my Queen. All I needed was my health and a few Madonna albums.
“Where are you going, Oggy?”
Toddy Bonigan leaned against a paper birch tree looking under his eyebrows at me. He was whittling a stick with slow motions of a sharp knife. I backed away from him.
“I'm going to Florida. They loved me there. They didn't pick on me. We smoked pot and slept a lot and that was fine. I didn't have to defend myself there. They like me as I am. They even listened to Hall and Oates.”
“We made a deal, Oggy, and where I come from a man doesn't go back on his word.”
“You and I come from different places, Bullwhip.”
“Do we? We both know Pirates Cove. We both know the salt piles on the harbor. We know the taste of Gillies hot dogs, the combination to our gym lockers, the pride of a Championship. We hit the same baseballs. We walked arm in arm on the same crooked streets. How are we different, Oggy?”
I started to tell Bonigan to let me alone to follow my own destiny but the light caught the trees just like it did at Oggy's point. A tree branch knocked my hat off my head and when I picked it up I heard quick children feet scamper through the leaves to play Capture The Flag. I could smell the Fenway Park bleachers and the infield dirt at Leary Field. Echoes of BHHS basketball games returned along with the cries of Shea Stadium.
“All they need is one more strike, Oggy. I was there. You slipped. You were weak.”
“I wasn't. I was never strong. I did all I could do. I gave everything.”
“You were weak and you know it. You wanted them to lose. You wanted them to lose and now you want to run away from your responsibility. We had a deal. I don't know why I have to keep reminding you. Haven't you got what you wanted? Respect? Adventure? You earned it, Oggy, and now you want to throw it away. Don't you know that this is going to be the biggest adventure yet? You aren't ready to come back to Oggy's point for another Youthfire. We're counting on you to come back with something new.”
“ What do you care about truth? I can make it all up like all the other songs.”
I could no longer tell which direction south was. There seemed to be two suns. Bonigan towered over me as tall as a tree and his words bit.
“I saw you slumped in that wicker chair with your pants around your ankles. Bone Harbor is dead for you. You are dead for Bone Harbor. The adventure is in Mexico.”
“Florida is close enough. If I can figure out which direction is south.”
You'll never make it without a car. You'll just end up back in Bone Harbor. You've tasted the stale beer before. Right? You've smelled the salt on the roads and felt the wind off the jetty at Fort Stark. You're the only one keeping it alive, but you need new songs. Look at George Bailey. He dried up because he didn't have any new songs.”
“But George got married to Mary. Who do I have? Faded pictures of Darcy and Rose? Lace will never come back to Bone Harbor with me. She thinks I'm Grizzly Adams living out at Oggy's point. She thinks I'm insane. Mary loved George right from the graduation dance. Lace won't even let me see her naked. All I have is Sticky.”
This realization came as a shock. Cristo was my friend? How had I let it come to this?
“ Don't forget where you come from, Oggy. Don't you feel the sadness when the wind hits your face like it did when you waited in line for a sundae at the Ice House in Break Island? Doesn't the sound of a video game remind you of the Dream Machine and Fun-O-Rama? You can have all that as long as you keep your hat and take my advice. We're a good team. Don't forget your roots. History doesn't teach itself.”
Not sure whether to run or hide, I held my Sox cap in my hands. Bonigan threw a stick at me.
“You don't trust yourself. You choke like Schiraldi. You can't get that last strike. But you're respected in Bone Harbor. You're a legend there as long as you don't kill the golden goose. Don't blow it in the bottom of the tenth inning. You want your stuffed animals in one place, Oggy? Just be patient. Find a girl settle down. One day you will get to watch Knight strike out.”
Bonigan was right. I had earned that respect from Erin and Huggy and Cristo. Sometimes the cook at Gillies would let me have a free hot dog at closing time. And once I played pool at the Bowl-o-Rama for two hours and the cashier only charged me a dollar. Of course, I could play as many arcade games as I wanted when the Fun-o-Rama opened in June. That was respect. Who was I to shun that much praise? I had craved it for so many years, slithered through so many halls, pissed in so many aluminum troughs, begged so many girls to watch Footloose with me, and now I had their attention. There was no need to run from Piper or Lacy. There was no need to abandon my plan to go to Mexico. The weather in Florida wasn't that great anyway. It was humid in the summer and rained in the winter.
“Just do the right thing and get back to your car, Oggy. There is no need to suffer anymore than you have. You own a car now. Go in style. Take Lace. She'll thank you for it later.”
I knew when to stop fighting. It was like the old ninja master said, “If you want to dig a well, don't dig many shallow holes. Dig one hole until it hits water.” I turned around and aimed the beak for Piper's apartment.