Pure Dirt

by Francis Adams

  “OK. The power table is ready. Hello backstage. Close the curtains. Who’s backstage? Close the curtains. Would someone talk to the cage?” Malloy yelled. The curtains slowly moved to close, stopped, revered, then reversed again until they were closed. “The sound will start the opening. There’s a welcome message and a thank you. As soon as the message stops, we’ll fade the lights. And Bergman will cue the sound. Sound man! Are you ready?” Jack asked.

  “Ready, Jack.”

  “When the music starts, we’ll wait for the fade. When the drums start, slowly open the curtains. I want them to open very slowly to reveal the monolithic screen. The power table knows when to hit the film. Wait for the film to start. Slide projectors, stand-by. You will hit the side walls with slides about a minute into the music. I’ll give you your cue. You must remember your cue because I won’t be shouting at you during the performance. OK. We’re on a ten.” Jack began the countdown.

  “Orson Welles! This is not a time to eat your lunch,” Jack scolded, “If you eat your lunch now, you won’t have anything to eat at lunchtime.” Orson wrapped the sandwich and set it next to the slide projector.

  “On a nine, anyone have a problem they would like to discuss?” Jack continued.

  “I lost my flashlight. Did anyone find a flashlight? I can’t read the notes in the dark.”

  “Someone get Tchotchke a flashlight. We’re holding on a nine. Who has a flashlight?” Malloy waited while Dede rummaged through the emergency box. She ran the flashlight over to Leonard.

  “We’re going to an eight. Bergman is your sound cued. Did you test the volume?” Jack asked.

  “Yes, boss.”

  “OK, we’re on an eight. Any questions?”

  Silence.

  “No one? Then we’ll proceed to a three.” Jack counted down, “on a two…on a one…and hit.”

  Jack Malloy’s voice filled the room:

  “Good evening and welcome to the third annual June film festival. The students have worked busily all year making their flop-flops. We call them flop-flops because we know how impossible it is to make a film. We want to thank the administrators and teachers for their support, and you, the audience, for taking the time out of your busy schedules to join us tonight. Thank you, and we hope you enjoy the show.”

  The soaring violins of Barry White’s Love Theme enveloped the auditorium. The lights dimmed as the curtain slowly opened. At the sound of the drums, the six projectors hit the screen with images. The projector frames appeared on the screen like postage stamps on a large white business envelope.

  After the rehearsal, Jack drove Jane, Pharo and Hank in the pizza wagon down Princeton Pike to a coffee shop next to Jackie’s creek. They critiqued the rehearsal over coffee. “We need all of the light that we can get. We have to make sure that those side doors are closed. If someone walks in during the show it will kill us. And make sure all of the hall lights are out during the show,” Jack said. “We need to assign someone to make sure. Is the light bleeding through the canvas?” Jack reached into the cigarette pack and lit a cigarette. “Maybe we could put rolls of white paper behind the screen to reflect the light,” Jane suggested. “Pharo, would you be able to cover the back of the screen?” Pharo kept quiet. “We’ll get you a staple gun. It shouldn’t cost that much. I am going to the art center to pick up posters advertising the festival.” Jack dragged on his cigarette, “Any other business?”

  “The lens,” Jane said.

  “The boss at photo haven is renting us a super zoom-zoom lens for our main projector. He said it will make the frame wider. Put that on the budget.” Jane wrote on a page in her small sketchbook. “And cans of air. We want to make sure the projectors are free of dust. I have a spare film splicer for the power table, in case a film breaks. Those splices are holding the show together,”

  During the remaining days, lockers slammed, and seniors chattered in the halls about the prom. The boys who had girlfriends bragged about limousine rentals and rooms in Atlantic City; the unattached young men mustered the courage to ask a girl for a date. The question most often heard that week was “Who are you taking to the prom?” Hank was an urban transplant. He had grown up in a concrete enclave of eastern European immigrants. The lines of row homes butted one against the other were a far cry from the single-family ranchers and split-level homes with lawns. The sole proprietorships of city businesses, the mom and pop stores, were a stark contrast to the sleek new shopping malls. Hank opted out of the prom. He feigned interest when asked, but he did not understand the relevance of this time-honored social tradition. He was an outcast, not by choice, but by inheritance.

  Hank sat in algebra class drawing dots on graph paper and connecting them with lines on the Cartesian coordinate system. When the bell rang, and as the students rushed the door, Ms. Langley called out, “Hank!” He stopped in his tracks and peered over at his teacher. “I’d like to speak with you.” Hank waited for the room to empty and walked over to her desk. She was a young woman who was a novice at teaching high school students. “Your grades have not been good, Hank, and unless you pass the final, I am going to have to give you a failing grade. I spoke with your guidance counselor, and I have requested a meeting with one of your parents. If you plan to continue your education, you will need to know this stuff. Let me know which day you can meet after school in the guidance office with one or both of your parents.”

  Hank drove home dreading the talk with his mother. Why do I need algebra? Who cares about X or Y or whether the dots connect? I’m not going to be a rocket scientist. Mom’s going to flip. I have to drag her into school to be drilled by Miss Calculator.

  The meeting was arranged. Hank slipped through the embarrassing episode only to be sentenced to drills by an algebra tutor. The tutor was recommended by his mother’s friend and lived in a spacious house on a cul-de-sac next to the country club. Mrs. Siswein was a kind woman, who sat Hank down at her dining room table, and spoke kindly to him. “You have a final exam. They want you to solve a quadratic equation. We don’t have a lot of time to work together, so if I show you something, and you don’t ask questions, you simply follow the steps that I show you, you’ll be able to pass this test. Agreed?” She asked.

  “Agreed.”

  “You can find the roots to this problem by using this simple formula. See here? Minus ‘b’, plus or minus the square root of ‘b’ squared minus ‘4ac’ over ‘2a’.” Hank silently watched her write on paper. “The standard form of a quadratic is ‘ax’ squared, plus ‘bx’, plus ‘c’, equals zero. When you see this form, you know that you must factor the equation to find the roots.” These tutoring sessions went on long enough for Hank to memorize the steps necessary to pass the final exam at the bargained price of two hundred dollars. He graduated knowing what a parabola was, but minus boobs, plus or minus the square root of birdbrains squared, minus four asinine cretins, all over two asshats evaded him.

  The evening of the film festival had arrived. Easels were placed in the hallway leading to the auditorium. Black and white photographs, that were created in the school’s darkroom, advertised the flop-flops. A battalion of Filmnuts lined up behind a row of projectors. The second unit flanked the slide projectors alongside the walls. Programs were distributed to the attendees listing the itinerary of short films. The event drew a large group of parents, friends, and former students. The opening greeting played while the lights dimmed. One by one, each film was presented, accompanied by its musical soundtrack. The highlight and finale of the event was the dance film Soul; a sequence of two second flash-cuts of movement syncopated to the rhythm of jazz flute; the frozen face of a young girl superimposed over the movement of back alleyways; the dancers cast in a backdrop of wilderness; a four year old boy in a red bandana dancing in close up on a park bench; the soundtrack booming Go up Moses, you’ve been down too long .The flop-flop was an amateur work of art.

  Graduation gown measurements
were announced on the intercom the following Monday morning. Hank wished that he could opt out of the ceremony. He had skidded through the year with a minimum of effort and felt undeserving of a diploma. His interests were cultivated away from the formality of a classroom. He became proficient on the guitar, learned darkroom technique and the science of optics with his still camera, and read novels that were unassigned in class.

  “I don’t want to attend graduation,” he told Jack.

  “Why not?” Jack replied.

  “I think it’s ridiculous.”

  “Hank, you may think so, but you owe it to your parents to attend. You have to let them feel the pride of your graduation, not for any other reason, you should do it for them.”

  Hank acquiesced.

  Although Hank had missed the appointment for his yearbook picture, he had ordered a yearbook anyway. Having been a transplant, he did not mind being socially invisible; perhaps to his own discredit. He picked up the yearbook in the school library and stopped to speak to the librarian on his way out the door.

  “Well, I made it,” he said.

  “Wonderful. Congratulations,” Mrs. Lopez beamed, “who did you take to the prom?”

  “I didn’t go to the prom.”

  “You didn’t go?”

  “Would you like to sign my yearbook?” he asked. The librarian was a kind older lady nearing retirement.

  “Certainly.”

  She opened the book to the page with her photograph and wrote,” To the boy that I am going to the prom with next year, congratulations, Mrs. Lopez.”

  Hank lined up in cap and gown at the entrance to the football field. The humidity in the air was stifling. The band began Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March, and the graduates marched two by two along the track to the portable platform erected on the football field. The principal gave a welcoming speech. The township mayor gave a speech. The county executive gave a speech. Finally, the class valedictorian gave a speech. Student’s names were called. You grabbed the diploma with your left hand, shook the hand of the principal with your right, then walked back into the line you hailed from. The band played. Students marched off the field and broke into a crowd of well-wishers and flashing instamatics. Hank stopped for a photograph then bolted to the building, opening the snaps on his red gown and tearing it off in a hurry as he walked. Mrs. Conner, an English teacher, was standing next to the return boxes. “Hank! You’re the first one to turn your cap and gown in,” she pointed out. “I didn’t even want to attend,” he answered and walked away.

  Hank spotted Pharo who hunched his shoulders and grinned trying not to laugh. “We’re going out to celebrate,” Pharo said, “You want to go?”

  “Alright.”

  “I’m going to the store. You want a pint of Southern Comfort?” Pharo asked.

  “OK. Why not?”

  “Meet me in the Village at Kade’s in half an hour.”

  When Hank arrived at the Village, Pharo, Kade, and Buck were huddled near the mailboxes. Pharo handed Hank the pint of whiskey and told him that he would drive the Buick. “There’s a party on Zofia’s chicken farm.”

  Hank sat in the backseat of his Buick sipping from the pint of Southern Comfort. He knew Zofia from his history class. She was boisterous and often made funny remarks in class. The Buick drove down a long dirt road until it arrived in a huge field. Senior graduates were everywhere. Zofia was well liked. Hank breathed in the fetid odor of chickens which lingering in his nostrils. By now, he had nearly imbibed half a pint of Southern Comfort, and he had assumed all the genteel mannerisms of a Dixieland gentleman. He greeted anyone he recognized, even those he didn’t, with a warm handshake and an ardent “How ya’ll doin’ ?, Congratulations!” He punctuated his well wishes to the girls with pecks on the cheek. Within the hour, Hank climbed into the backseat of his Buick and passed out drunk off his rocker.

  Hank was mightily hungover when he woke in the morning. His head felt as large as a pumpkin and pounded like a dynamo. His sternum was sore from what he thought might have been his head hanging out of the car window. His neck was sore from having slept in the backseat of his car. Pharo opened the driver’s side door and greeted him.

  “How are you feeling? He asked with a grin.

  “Did you get the license plate of the car that ran over me?” Hank joked.

  “Come on. You need to eat something,” Pharo remarked.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “I know, but the sooner you get something in you, the better you will feel.”

  Pharo drove to the pancake house. The two friends faced each other in a booth and ordered breakfast.

  “Do you know what you did last night?” Pharo asked.

  “What did I do?”

  “You don’t remember?” Pharo added.

  “We went to the chicken farm.” Hank recalled.

  “Yes.”

  “What did I do?” he insisted.

  “If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you,” Pharo teased.

  The waitress appeared with a tray. She placed an omelet in front of Hank. Instantly, his brain registered chicken poop. “I can’t eat this; it smells like chicken shit!” Hank muttered pushing the plate away. Pharo laughed, “Well, try the pancakes, you’ll be fine, it’s just going to take a little time. Here.” he refilled Hank’s coffee mug.

  After Hank returned to earth, he stopped at Jane’s to give her a ride to the art supply store. She purchased oil paints. The school year had ended, and she was heading to the shore for the summer. “I have a place in Wildwood. I’ll be working at Mario’s with Jack. He manages one of the pizza stands on the boardwalk. He’s offered Pharo a summer job. You work thirteen-hour days, seven days a week, at the end of the season, you’ll get a huge check if you let Mario hold your money for you,” Jane explained.

  “So you keep your apartment in the Tower?” Hank asked.

  “Yes. I’ve worked at Wildwood for three summers. This will be my fourth. There’s a lady who rents me the top floor of her house with a private entrance. She’s reasonable.”

  “And Pharo is going to work at the shore?”

  “Yes, Mario has rooms above the main floor where the help can stay. He’ll make good money with his room included for free.” Hank felt a pang of grief. He would miss his friends. Why didn’t Jack ask him to work?

  Chapter Six:

  The Red Light

  The summer was uneventful, except the first extraterrestrial message was sent from Earth into space. John Lennon was ordered to leave the United States in sixty days, and President Nixon resigned the office of the Presidency.

  In July, Hank drove the Buick down the Garden State Parkway until it ended. He crossed over the barrier islands into Wildwood. The Wildwood boardwalk stretched for two miles alongside the sandy beaches of the Atlantic Ocean and was lined with eateries, shops, and thrill rides. Hank walked the boards searching for Mario’s pizza stand. “Watch the tram car please! Watch the tram car please!” He was startled by the female voice creeping up close from behind him. The linked cars of the Sightseer tram passed by filled with tourists, people watchers relaxing in the shade under covered awnings. Hank passed Morey’s Pier which extended out towards the sea. A giant mock replica of King Kong hovered over the pier with Fay Ray dangling from Kong’s clenched hand. A barker dressed in blue coveralls pranced apelike up to passersby wearing a Planet of the Apes mask over his head. Further along the boardwalk at Hunt’s pier, the Jungleland boat ride thrilled youngsters as they floated through a mock African jungle. Hank spotted Mario’s stand. Jack Malloy was standing next to a piemaker stretching dough. Jane stood at the counter waiting on customers.

  “Jane,” Hank greeted, “smells good.”

  “Hank, here, have a slice,” she said sliding a slice of pizza onto a paper plate. “Jack, Hank’s here.”

  “Abbott, sit down. It’s
hot,” Jack replied. Hank grabbed a booth and munched on the slice of pie.

  “How long are you here?” Jane asked.

  “I’ll drive home tonight,” Hank answered.

  “Meet us at three o’clock. We take an hour break before the evening rush,” Jack spoke through the din of customers.

  “I’ve never seen such a long boardwalk,” Hank pointed out, “It goes on forever.” He threw the paper plate and cup into the trash. “I’ll see you at three.”

  At three o’clock, they met at the Harbor Inn. “Did you drive down today?” Jack asked.

  “Yes. I was bored. I’ve never been to Wildwood.” Hank said.

  “Well, I’ll try and find you a place to stay for a night,” Jack offered.

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I’ll ask one of the piemakers.”

  “Where’s Pharo?” Hank asked.

  “He works at another location. He’d be glad to see you,” Jane remarked. “We start work at ten in the morning and work until after midnight. We take short breaks.”

  Jack sipped on his frosted mug of beer. “I manage the stand. I make sure there’s enough sauce, cheese, and that the waste cans don’t spill over. Jane’s a server. We’ll visit Paul tonight. He has a pad in the Crest. Do you think you can keep yourself entertained until then?”

  “Sure, I’ll walk the boards, they’re long enough, or maybe check out the streets. There’s so many bars,” Hank pondered. How did you wind up here?” Hank asked Jack.

  Jack took a drag on his cigarette then exhaled. “I came here after I got out of the Navy, I was discharged and blew into town. Back then it was called Little Vegas. A lot of celebrities came here to perform, big names, Cab Calloway at the Bolero, Nat King Cole at the Beach Club. I saw Lady Day here when she was on her last legs. It was the playground of the stars.”

  “I didn’t know,” Hank replied.