Darkness always seems to take longer. But then we are out of the black viaduct. The highway is right above us, with lights and cars. The skating rink is just below us, a short ways ahead.
We’ve come all the way along a great sideways S curve of land downhill to a final low level. Home is at the left tip of the sideways S. The viaduct and the Little Egypt are along the middle curve of the S. The rink is on the right tip of the S. It sits there below, to one side of a flat level land with the park behind it.
I shiver all over at the sight of that ten-foot neon sign flashing — SKATELAND 68. SKATELAND 68. The rink is named after the State Route 68, which is the highway above us. Beyond the rink lights, there is darkness. The park is a timber forest. The part of it where Sun will ride Jeremiah, he will call the glen. And when you look down from here toward the rink, you are looking through tall and scattered forest trees.
We follow a path worn along the slope of a gentle ridge. Jack Sun is leading, of course. Hurrying on ahead now, he is out of sight in darkness. Angel and me have to take our time for fear of slipping and falling.
“I hate this part,” she says.
“I sure do, too,” I say. But I don’t. I love all of it.
It begins to rain down on us so gently. All around, the sound, like wind starting up high in the trees and many leaves falling. That’s why it’s so dark tonight. Rain clouds. I don’t mind rain. I like the sound. A fall rain and no warning of its coming, but for clouds.
Angel is right with me. We take our time going off the ridge down a slope. And now we are getting wet enough to make us chilly.
“Will it cause my make-up to run?” I ask her.
“It’ll be okay,” she says. Never saying, Girl, you think of the dumbest things. Just like a dumb kid.
We are down. And walking through grasses and weeds getting slick with the wet. In a minute I wish I was back in my bed. But not for long.
People are running out of the rink with their skates still on. They skate on down the sidewalks. Making a lot of noise rolling to the parking lot to make sure their car windows are closed. They are mostly older and some younger ones finished with high school.
Sun waits for us in front of the entrance to the rink.
We come up close and he says right in our faces, “It’s all clear. But be ready in case of an emergency.” We don’t have to say anything back. We know what to do.
We all three hurry inside, laughing and swaggering some, like I am older, like we’ve been having this great time somewheres else and are giving this old rink a treat because we’ve come here.
We get inside. “We couldn’t be luckier,” Angel says. Jack Sun nods, and it’s the truth.
We have come at the Snowball Time. The Snowball is spinning and spinning. This lighted ball, huge, and covered with mirrors, hanging from the ceiling and turning. It spins to make spots of white light and mirror reflections of light all over the floor and walls, and on the skaters. It makes skaters look like they are speeding in the dark through falling snow swirling in a whirling wind.
“Let me get in there! Hurry up!” I tell Sun and Angel.
But they take it easy. There is this cashier’s cage with a woman in it right near the entrance. I keep an eye on her and all around, too, but nobody looks at me closely in the Snowball.
Sun walks up and buys the tickets. Tickets cost a dollar each. The reason why we can’t come here more than once a week, or once on weekends. Sun has to pay for all of us because I have no money and because Angel is his date. It costs fifty cents each for skates. Sun has his own skates which he bought from the rink. He keeps them here so Mom will never know. And so the rink maintenance can oil them and take better care of them.
Jack Sun has the tickets and we go over to the left where you pick up the skates. The Snowball is still going on. Noise is so loud, and music and snow falling. Skaters whirling around. Late at night, Sun says, this place is crowded from workers off the night shift, or laid off from machinery and tool plants. They hurry in here for the need of unwinding. Some little bit of smart skating for to relax tensed-up muscles. Sun says, for some fun going around the rink and messing around with chicks and dudes before home tired and trying to sleep.
We take our skates to a bench right up front by the rail of the rink. Sun’s skates are fine-looking, with maple-wood rollers like the sweet maple wood of the rink floor. Mine and Angel’s are just good shoe skates for stroking along. I’m a pretty good skater but not as good as she is or as Sun is.
Seeing her in the light. Like a wheat stalk bending in a field. She has on wheat-colored pants and shirt, I think. Hard to tell with white spots of the Snowball over everything. She or Sun, either, don’t give me a second glance, so my costume of being older must look all right. Sun always looks like a rich boy from some big-deal school in Hawaii or some place of tropics. In a place of lots of people from towns, he doesn’t look American or even like a blood. But some special breed from some special place. People always do look him over hard. Especially when he has Angel on his arm. They make a combination of grandness, and I think they must know it.
The hardest and the slowest part is getting my shoelaces tight enough. Angel gets Sun to tighten them for me. He does and then he tightens Angel’s.
I love the truce with Jack Sun Run. He loves Angel. She likes me. And he doesn’t hate me in the truce. We are ready to skate into the rink.
We are cars going on a freeway. Only, cars have these lanes to travel. We have just an invisible space between ourselves. You have to sprint fast to get into the rink. You have to find the pace of everybody moving in the same direction and at the same speed. It takes no time, and I am stroking along. With each new stroke, one foot or the other touches lightly on the floor. Real smoothly, I glide in my curve of travel. Left skate curves toward the center of the rink; my right skate curves toward the railing. Toes pointing down for to look so graceful. I lean in and I lean out, and to tilt in a straight line sideways toward the floor. I have lost Sun and Angel in the stream of skaters in the Snowball Time.
I am free and rolling free, with nothing holding me back. This is the best old time. Wheels under my shoes tickling my feet. I can hardly stand the way it feels so real funny at first. But soon that tickling goes away.
A dude coming up on my right. We call him a referee, dressed in black-and-white-striped shirt and black pants with black shoe skates. There are usually two referees. They all of the time skate to make sure the pace is just fast enough but not crazy. Anyone who spills they take quickly off the floor.
The referee right beside me. I make myself look straight ahead. Make some long, graceful strokes. Looking peaceful and bored, until the dude strokes on ahead of me.
“Good. I’m okay.” To myself.
A woman in this really short skating outfit has two men stroking on either side of her. All painted up with a pink ribbon in long, very dyed black hair. Looking like she is a high-school girl, almost. Older people behind me and all around.
Music is loud. The skating is so loud. All of me is skating hard and there is no unhappiness in my stroking. All the tired and all sadness rolls away behind me. A pure, sweet feeling is rolling with me. Ahead of me, I think rolling I will come to something stroking that I have never come to before. Someday.
In the center of the rink is this really huge area marked off by a black circle. Early evening, and skaters who are still learning skate within the black circle. Tonight, no one skates there except for an old guy. Sun says they call him Long Neck Sport-’em-O. I’ve seen him a couple of times, too. Because he dresses sporty, although he is all of seventy-two if he’s a day, and because he strokes along with his neck thrown way forward. So really weird and funny to see.
But Long Neck is a supreme skater. What they call a purist because he follows all the rules of skill. He can do the School of Figures, all the positions and combination figure eights without ever changing a one of them. They say he can. No one I know’s ever seen him. But we believe he can, because w
hat we’ve seen him do is letter-perfect. Right now he is finishing up a serpentine, which is a three-circle figure. In the final circle he changes his lean super cool to the center. Now he’s in the primary outside forward edge. He is going to complete letter-perfect, as folks say here.
I just go around, not racking my brain much to figure out the names and stuff of what he is doing. But just watching the old guy, wondering how it feels to be old and to skate with everyone secretly watching you, to learn it from you. I wouldn’t mind to grow old and die on rollers, I sure wouldn’t.
Come Angel and Jack Sun stroking me by on the outside. They do what is called a tandem dance position but without touching. Sun is stroking directly behind Angel so that their feet are in line. They are skate-dancing through the music, which is the best way. Never touching, they take the Snowball in what is the precision time, and they look wonderful. I race to catch them, they took me so by surprise. I catch them and skate all around them, always keeping a stroke ahead of them. Not too cool, going so fast.
Sun looks worried, glances around for the referee. He and Angel open a space for me between them. Sun is in back of me, and Angel in front. We skate precision. We are tight not touching on cornering. It feels like we stroke faster and faster in the snowballing. Snow falling all over us, all over the ground. We skate all around. We skate on down the snow, getting smaller and smaller. Faster. Taking off from a hilltop and watching yourself go down, getting smaller and smaller.
“We’re going to fall over! Sun!” But he doesn’t hear me. Angel hears it and slows the stroke. Soon lights come up, not too bright. Ends the Snowball Time.
Sweating in Angel’s sweater, I am cold with this creepy fear.
“It felt like I was going over,” I tell her.
“Going over what?” she says.
“Going … to fall,” I lie, I don’t know why. Then we break out of our three-some. They skate on away. I slow down. My legs feeling shaky.
“Okay, folks, settle down.” Coming to us over the PA system. The voice of this manager who plays some of the records.
Everybody skates along without some music, getting used to lights without the Snowball. The roar is steady, without a swing to it. All of rhythm goes out of me. I’m tired.
“Okay, folks, get in the groove. Time for the Couples’ Skate.” Up come some soft lights called the Moonlight.
Meaning for singles to find partners. I hate the doubles skate, and to think it makes me all out of line and leaning wrong. Can’t make up my mind to be on the sidelines and maybe seen, or look for Sun or Angel to be my partner. I know they will want to skate couple together.
Jack Sun coming up fast beside me, black hair flying in the breeze skaters make going around. “Moon, find someone or else get off the floor!”
“Let me skate with Angel.”
“No. You find someone!”
“Who can I find?” But he is gone, stroking up to Angel ahead of me. Taking her in this full-face waltz position. The music comes on loud in a blues fox-trot. Sun changes their position to the blues prime. Which is just him and Angel standing side to side. Her left arm across his chest to hold his left hand. His right arm behind her back and hand holding her right hand at her hip. They begin the dance with a real pretty four-step corner sequence, with the first two strokes one beat each and the third, on their left feet for two beats. It’s more than pretty, but I’ve got to get off the floor.
When this person grabs me in position for the blues. “Now, girlie, what er you doin’ out here all by your lonesomes?”
Oh my lord, it’s Long Neck Sport-’em-O. With nobody to stroke with.
“I can’t do the dancing too good,” I manage to stammer at him. Just scared to death and thrilled at the same time.
“Girlie, this is easy as pie.”
A good thing he isn’t so tall and I’m not any shorter, or I’d never get my arm across his chest.
Well, he is expert and it is pie-easy when you have him to follow. There’s Angel and Sun stroking alongside. Giving me and my partner a look, with Angel giggling at us.
Old Long Neck smiles right back at them. “Sure. Now ain’t we something?”
“Pure pleasure!” Sun yells back. He gives me a look, which to say that me and my partner are a queer sight. I could have killed him.
It’s strange dancing on skates next to a seventy-two-year-old man. Not that I have much experience, but once in a while one of the younger guys will turn me a few dances. But Long Neck is much lighter on his feet and so smooth. His grip is strong, but he will breathe in real short breaths down on my arm. And he sometimes grunts with all of the moving. What would I do if he passed out right there on the floor with a quitting heart? Don’t even think it! I concentrate on LOF’S (Left foot on the outer edge of the skate and forward motion) and RIF’S (Right foot on the inner edge of the skate and forward motion) and the XB’S, which are strokes sliding the right foot back and crossing behind the left heel, and stepping down on the forward half of the right foot. In a short time I don’t have to think the movemerits at all. Oh, that blues dance is pure pleasure for sure.
I don’t mind who sees me dancing with him. Barely care if they see me as a kid trying to be older, and him ancient and trying to be younger. Why shouldn’t he roll himself on into heaven if he wants? That sure must be the best way to go, too.
Sun and Angel pass us by in long strokes through the music. Suddenly we are up on them again and they move in close. I can hear Sun yelling something through Long Neck’s funny breathing.
“What?” I yell back across to Sun.
All I hear him say next time is something like “urgency.” He gives up yelling over the blues and the roar of skates. He mouths the word: E MER GEN CY.
Oh, my lord. Oh, for heaven … I’m out of step, out of rhythm. Losing my balance!
You are responsible. Me, for killing the old guy.
The next thing I know, I contact Long Neck’s left foot. Pure and simple, I trip him.
We are going down. He’s down, flat on his back. And me down hard on my knees like I’m going to give a prayer.
The shame, and with referees all at once all over the old guy, dragging him in a split second out of the line of skaters. Bodies hurl away from me, not missing a stroke. I have messed up a whole floor of rhythm. And all of them staring at me. Some angry stares, and maybe seeing I’m only a kid that shouldn’t be there. Because kids don’t know how to have some respect.
Somewhere in that awful spill I had a second to see this policeman standing at the rail with one of the men who run the place.
E MER GEN CY
And somewhere in there I know I’ve hurt my knees so bad the pain is terrible. Ref’s going to get me. Coming, and no more than a second or two from the time they got my partner.
I’m up on my feet and rolling. Skating like crazy. And off the rink. No time to look for Sun and Angel. I’m off the rink down the ramp full force to the girls’ restroom.
“Hey, young woman!” The last I hear someone calling. The cop, for sure. Will he come in after me?
I bust open the door just as this large woman in a green pantsuit is preparing to leave. I clip her arm, spinning her around, and I hit one of the swinging doors of the cubicles hard.
“Well, for pity … Whyn’t you slow down afore you wreck some hav-oc on somebody!” She’s a right to be mad, too.
“Sorry. Dint mean to hurt you.” I lock myself in the cubicle. Just for a minute until the woman has skated on out of there. I skate to the bench under the window. Have to hurry. I picture the policeman easing up on the restroom and I have to get away.
“Oh, my goodness.”
How’m I going to get anywhere on the skates? I have to, and scramble up on the bench under the window next to the sinks. Holding tight to the windowsill and happen to remember the rest-room is above ground level. Because you roll down the ramp to it. But when you stand on the floor, the window is above your head. There’s got to be a drop from the window on the ou
tside of the building.
Try to remember what the outside looks like coming down from the viaduct. No great big falling off of land, as I recall. Probably more like a six-feet drop.
We always knew this would happen one time. So why didn’t we figure how far one of us would have to leap?
I force the window up and I climb over, one foot at a time. One skate scrapes my ankle. Hurting myself and feeling rain on my face, sudden.
And jump. Hands holding my stomach when I should’ve had my arms out for balance. Too late.
The ground comes up so fast and hard. The worst kind of shock. A blow that shoots straight up my legs clear to my scalp. Can’t breathe, skates flying out from under me. My behind hits so hard I’m going to die. Seconds, seeing sparkles.
I come to, cold and wet and hurting. Angel’s sweater must be a mess. I can’t move until I can breathe. It is the awfulest feeling, to wait for breath and know you might die.
When finally I can get up, I remember the skates and so I crawl as fast as I can. Know where I am, in the flat meadow place next to the rink where the Little Egypt used to run through. I crawl on and on with my knees hurting, killing me. Soon I get on my feet, walking and rolling a little bit at a time. Making so much noise, but the rink roar must cover it. Have to get to the timber of the park. Maybe I won’t get busted if I’m on state property. Me clinking through the weeds takes so long! It’s so dark and rainy — supposing somebody is hiding!
Don’t even think it, so I go on in the dark. And scared, about to cry like a baby. Oh, why did I get into this? Just need to moan and whine, like a baby. Somewhere inside, I know what it’s like to be all alone. And lost.
“Sun? Is that you?” It’s only a tree coming up on me fast. There are lots of trees now, and I must be in the state park. I have to stop because land does these strange dips into gullies and ravines. I hide myself behind a tree, just shaking to death.
I’m way far out behind and to the side of the rink. I’m far out and can see the lights and just hear the loudspeaker, but I can’t make it out. The voice sounds like an echo of God or something. Scary. I can’t help shivering, getting cold as ice. Just sort of crying with my voice against the tree bark. But not really crying, I’m too scared.
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