Playground Zero

by Sarah Relyea

  “How’s the old engine?” he asked, unsure of her mood.

  “Works good enough.” She was wearing bell-bottoms, like the local girls; she glanced away.

  Tom rephrased. “The engine can pull all the cars?”

  “So far.”

  Tom swung the paper bag and caboose loosely in one hand. “Do you want to see the redwoods?”

  “If you and Mom do,” she said, with a shrug.

  Tom had supposed as much: she was not pushing for the woods.

  “Do you like horses?” he pursued.

  “Do I what?”

  “You know—horses?” The mimicry was easy and impromptu; he’d made her frown without meaning to do so. “You have a book—your mother gave you a horse book.”

  “I never read that one.”

  “Not interested?”

  “I just haven’t read it. Are you saying I should?”

  “I asked if you liked horses.”

  “I dunno, I’ve never seen one.” She paused. “Maybe we could have a cat.”

  Tom held up the bag. “Well, here’s a new caboose. I bought it today.” Approaching the bed, he placed the paper bag on it, then headed for the door. In the spare room, he opened a window and leaned out. Cool, damp air was coming in. It was early evening, already October. Hearing the whir and whine of an engine coming from Alice’s room, Tom gazed over the roofs on a flaming Western sky.

  Alice

  THE DAY WAS sunny, but as usual her mother was napping as Alice headed for the nearby school, where her brother had met Sammy. The boys had become inseparable, leaving Alice to fend for herself.

  The playground was empty. Pondering the tree house and Howard Singer, she imagined going there alone, climbing the steep and secluded path. Tree Frog had flamed through Lincoln School like a comet, leaving a trail of ash. Precocious and assured, he’d refused the boredom and bullying and won. But for her, things were getting worse. A few boys had begun making smacking sounds as she passed in the hallways; they were precocious in other ways. For some reason—confusion, anger, fear of being blamed—she was keeping her problems secret, especially since Mr. Boyd’s scolding. Though she’d had no warning, such things would go on happening.

  Pausing under a dense tree, she reached for a low-lying frond. She was remembering a gangly, redheaded boy pushing over a desk. Amazingly, Tree Frog’s parents had rewarded their son’s mutiny. She imagined doing the same—but no, her father would never go along. He would blame her, saying everyone should have the same chance; he’d already suggested as much when she’d come close to revealing the hassles at school.

  Tree Frog’s parents were professors; when he was older, he would follow physics and psychology the way she followed underdogs.

  Alice approached Bancroft Way, bordering the campus. She could see the Campanile bell tower; it reminded her of the Washington Monument, only closer, less intimidating. She would go there soon, but for now the energy was flowing toward Sproul Plaza, and so she followed, falling in behind a group of longhaired young people. Older than her and Curt but younger than her parents, they belonged to an uncanny category of strangers brought close by the faces she’d seen on album covers. Mingling with them, she passed the raucous drummers by the edge of Sproul Plaza and became one of the crowd. No one seemed bothered by her incongruous presence; no one suggested that she leave. Even so, the swirl of young adults, the hippies gathered on the steps of the Student Union, the leafleting longhairs made her feel that she’d crossed a border and was now trespassing. The campus buildings, too, like the federal buildings in Washington, had an unimagined purpose scarcely belonging to her. Yet she’d found her way here—it was as if she’d passed through a door in the Rayson house and found a hubbub . . . a merging . . . heaven or hell. If only she would dare.

  The sun shone blindingly in her face. The space engulfed her as a Romanesque building blotted out the Campanile. A bearded man was coming through the crowd bearing an armload of papers, and as the Campanile bells rang a clumsy melody, he glanced up and rushed on. Following along the enormous length of the Romanesque facade, she rounded a corner and soon found herself in a small glade. Several people lay reading; a man was wandering barefoot. The barefoot man was bearded and bare-chested and had a suffering face, reminding her of a face she’d seen in a painting in the museum in Washington. He was blowing bubbles.

  Leaving the glade, Alice wandered east, passing several older halls. The Campanile could be seen above the campus buildings. Soon she could see a slope rising beyond the border of the campus. She was far from where she’d come in and feeling very confused.

  The Campanile was ringing noon.

  She crossed a road and headed uphill. Howard Singer’s tree house would be there, somewhere . . .

  After a long climb, she emerged on a wooded hill above a Greek-style amphitheater. She was surrounded by golden grasses, whose feathery seeds were borne on the wind. Eucalyptus fronds, giving off pungent odors, swayed in the languorous air rising from the bay. Crescents of dry foliage formed a treacherous ground cover. She climbed slowly, using roots and bare earth for footing.

  Approaching a eucalyptus tree, she fingered some bark that hung in parchment folds from the soaring trunk. Further up, the slope reached a road and leveled off. She was alone, overlooking the grove and, far below, amphitheater, Campanile, bay, and beyond. Wandering beneath the canopy, she was suffused with a sense of freedom.

  Then, emerging from some hanging branches, came two men. They were coming up the hill. She moved camouflaged among hanging fronds as the men—in worn Levi’s and wearing caps—waded through tinder-dry grasses.

  Shoulder-high, the grasses flowed over the open spaces in sunburned waves of grain.

  The men rose up the hill. Soon they were concealed once more by canopy. She could hear them now, laughing. Leaning on a eucalyptus trunk, cool as parchment, she surveyed the glimmering bay. Then she descended the path.

  Tom

  HE COULD WEAR jeans to work on a Saturday—who would say no? He closed the door of the spare bedroom, though Marian was asleep, her usual morning thing. He fingered a long white sleeve, then changed his mind and chose the rough workingman’s blue. He’d be working, in a way. Pushing the rough cloth down the unfastened jeans and along his thighs, he closed the fly and buckled the prancing-horse belt. It pressed on him like a brand. He wondered what Ginger would say.

  Marian could sleep for hours. He would be away for dinner, or so he’d warned her, saying he had a long day’s work in San Francisco, though Sunday would be free. There was a World Series game each day; missing the Saturday game was bad enough, he’d complained, as though he had no choice.

  Not long before, Marian had been amusing herself by demanding personal confidences from him. The game had been to make him reveal himself. So one evening he’d made up a story, something about a woodshed—there had been none—and masturbation. He’d been found by his mother, he told Marian, and rushed to a psychologist. Marian had smiled at the folly. “How old were you?” she asked. “I thought all boys do that.”

  “Seven.”

  “You were doing those things at seven?” Her tone was high and alarmed.

  “Well, maybe more like eleven.”

  “Oh.” She’d seemed reassured. “Women rarely have such stories.”

  “No?”

  “Good heavens, Tom.”

  Ginger would help with the alibi—she would be good that way, he thought, as he imagined her teasing smile.

  They had made plans over lunch, with Tom proposing dropping by her apartment and Ginger then naming the corner of Arguello and California, a few blocks away. They would be near an army base and in easy reach of the Golden Gate Bridge. From there, he would chauffeur them to the ranch in Marin. One of the horses was preparing for an endurance race, and Tom would be doing a favor by riding her, sparing the ranch hand a day on horseback. Tom had never supposed he would go so far by horse—over some low hills and then running on the beach. “Cassandra’s used
to greenhorn riders,” Ginger had assured him, in her teasing tone. “She won’t take advantage the way some horses do.” Tom had scarcely seen a horse, much less been near enough for the animal to abuse an advantage. Even so, Ginger had her plans, and he would be ready. He’d been imagining the scene: though the ocean would be chilly for swimming, they could wade in the surf. There would be lunch by the shore, some galloping, maybe a shady grove. Surely the horses could amuse themselves for an hour.

  Nearing Arguello, feeling a damp line developing along his jaw though the day was cool and dry, Tom could see the dome of a synagogue. Beyond the dome rose glimmering groves of eucalyptus, overhanging the bay and Golden Gate; the army base would be on the far slope, facing the ocean and the incoming enemy. Then, as Tom was musing, a royal-red hood loomed in the mirror, sporty and low: a Mustang. He heard the sound of Ginger’s horn.

  “I’m carrying the saddles,” she was saying as she came up alongside. Her eyes were gray-green and archly commanding; her hair had a fresh wave. She wore a pale-blue cowboy blouse with ruffled cuffs; her glossy fingernails were posed on the steering wheel. “There’s a parking space around the corner on Cornwall Street. You can leave your car for the day.”

  So, she was hauling her gear around. He wondered where the riding saddles would go in a San Francisco apartment—hardly the living room. Maybe she had a porch or a dressing room, or—who could say?—maybe the bedroom would do.

  In any case, she’d planned on taking her car. Usually he would have maneuvered around such a plan, but Ginger left no room for that. “We’ll have to hurry,” she called as he leaned from the Chevy. “Fog’s coming in soon.”

  Tom glanced up. The sky was a depthless blue, no clouds anywhere; but the autumn weather was unfamiliar.

  As he lowered himself through the Mustang’s passenger door, he heard her say, “Well, cowboy, I guess you’re ready.”

  So, she’d seen the prancing horse.

  Tom rarely rode in the passenger seat. They were passing through a neighborhood of elegant homes, grander than the ones they’d seen from the cab on curvy Lombard Street. Suddenly the car passed under a grove of eucalyptus.

  “We’re in the Presidio,” Ginger said, smiling. “You’d never know it’s an army base.”

  Tom was awed. They were surrounded by plunging canyons leading to the Golden Gate: here was no dreary Fort Leavenworth, where he’d done an army tour. As the road looped around and began descending, Ginger placed the car in low gear, her hand pulling lightly on the lever, her forefinger flexed as though for display. Tom glanced down, admiring her long and shapely fingers. When he looked up, a panorama lay before them of harbor and bay and far-off, foggy Marin. Soon they were on a freeway heading over the bridge. Though he’d been there for several months, Tom had never gunned the Chevy up and over the span. The cables hung tautly in the morning sun as the roadway curved up, coyly approaching. The glimmering bay in the east and ocean haze opening west announced endless morning: a whole day lay before them. They made the crossing under an easy lull, as though unaware of a changing mood. Soon a tunnel loomed ahead, enclosed by colored arches; passing under the rainbow, they were engulfed in a roaring mechanical light.

  Tom could see how much Ginger enjoyed managing the day. As the tunnel receded and golden hills loomed, she gave him some background on the ranch, glancing over now and then to gauge his response. It was the familiar stuff of government planning. Several years before, the ranch and other farms in the area had been bought up for the state parks. The farmers had been encouraged to remain, leasing the land for a nominal fee, so the agricultural economy would endure. As for the ranch, the former owners had preferred to leave, and a woman named Julia had been found to replace them, maintaining the land and allowing some public access—such as boarding horses for folks from San Francisco.

  Soon they abandoned the freeway for a winding lane passing through a suburban development. As the road began climbing, Tom glanced around on elegant woodland refuges surrounded by redwood and eucalyptus. Ginger was regaling him and laughing, and he supposed she was covering for some nervousness. That was a good thing, he thought, enjoying the sound of her giddy monologue.

  The road wound through dry hills and then dropped down the western slope. Ginger drove them north along the shore, following a ribbon of sand and marsh and lagoon, a wild and lonely place separating ocean and rugged canyons. As they were leaving the lagoon, the land opened up. Soon they came upon a road leading west and south, along the far side of the lagoon.

  Ginger glanced west. “There’s a small peninsula and a village—Bolinas. Would you care to see?”

  Tom nodded yes.

  They drove along the peninsula. The road headed west past some houses and then a main drag—a bar, a cafe, a general store.

  “Bolinas was a boom town years ago,” Ginger informed him. “Then the lagoon filled in and they closed the port. Now people come here when they’re running away to a rural place. The area is unincorporated—no local government, no police force.”

  “And no making hay,” Tom joked.

  “No, but they can get by cheaply. Some end up in Bolinas because welfare pays more here than in San Francisco.” Her eyes scanned the porch of the general store, pausing on a scruffy threesome. “Some people sure can work the welfare system—others have family money, though you’d never guess.”

  Tom nodded. During his forays along Telegraph Avenue, he’d wondered how many of those young people were sponging on government programs for the poor. What everyone was calling “the counterculture” was hardly more than another unforeseen spinoff from Johnson’s war on poverty. The random idleness bothered him more than the urban revolts. He wondered how well a person could get by on sponging out here—or in San Francisco.

  Ginger flashed a smile. “You remember what the Commissioner had to say—‘A great plumber is more admirable than an incompetent philosopher.’”

  Tom pondered. “And?”

  “Well, maybe these folks should go ahead and be plumbers, rather than imagining they’re philosophers.”

  A bedraggled young man wandered toward the car, followed by a dog. Ginger slowed to let them pass.

  “That fellow there,” Tom said. “I say he’d be a bad philosopher and a bad plumber, too. There should be some way of determining if he’s a good dropout, eh?”

  Ginger gave a knowing laugh. They wound through a lane and headed back toward the coast highway.

  “Ever see these problems back home?” he asked her.

  “We have farm workers, rural poor—but they’re real people. Helping the genuinely poor is one thing. The government should be doing that. But the ones here—”

  “Surely a small group, no?”

  “Why, Tom, they’re all over Telegraph Avenue.”

  “How many—a few hundred?”

  “More. And have you seen Haight-Ashbury?”

  Tom glanced over, feigning offense.

  “I never go there,” she added. “But last summer, people poured in by the thousands. They came for the ‘Summer of Love’ in Golden Gate Park, and now they won’t leave.”

  “How long can they keep going?”

  “For years, if they’re on the dole. And now they’re everywhere—San Francisco, Berkeley, even up here.” She paused. “Look over there, Tom.” Following her gaze, Tom saw a deep meadow leading to a farmhouse and a red barn, something from a postcard or a children’s jigsaw puzzle. “We’re here.”

  “Oh my.”

  Ginger headed up a long gravel driveway through some dry stubble. As they reached the fence, she stopped the Mustang.

  “How about opening the gate, Tom?”

  He climbed from the car, then jogged up and fumbled with the latch. The wide aluminum gate swung open in a pendulum arc. As the car purred through the gate, he heard her calling, “Make sure it’s closed all the way.”

  While Tom was closing the gate, she pulled around and parked by the barn. The farmhouse rose nearby, as though watching ov
er them.

  Ginger dragged a saddle from the trunk, leaving the other for Tom. Halfway to the barn, she called over her shoulder, “Hurry up, Tom, fog’s coming in!”

  Leaning in and grasping the other saddle, he saw a pair of shiny black riding boots and a lady’s silver-handled whip. The boots conformed closely to the shape of the calf; reaching above the knee, they lay in mid-gesture, like the legs of a mannequin. They reminded him of the fox-hunting Englishmen Marian had shown him in one of her museums. He gazed toward the barn, wondering if Ginger would be using the boots and whip. While he was mulling over the problem, she emerged from the barn.

  “Tom, would you bring my boots?” she called.

  Balancing the saddle on one arm, he grasped the boots. Lifting them from the trunk, he lowered his hand on the hood and slammed it closed. Then, dangling boots and stirrups, he approached the barn door, where she lingered, eyeing him; in one hand and over her shoulder looped a tangle of leather straps. Tom could already smell the horses. There was the heavy stench of manure; then as he came closer he encountered a warm, humid smell, enclosed and musty like a locker room, the press of many working animals in a small space. Hanging over it all was the sweet, pungent odor of hay.

  Ginger led him along a row of stalls, passing the rumps of horses. Above each stall hung a small board branded with a name. As she paused under one of the boards, Tom looked up and read “Haley.” Over the edge of the stall leaned a long nose and jaw, chewing methodically through a mouthful of hay. The saddle was slung over a nearby trestle.

  “Well, hello, Haley,” sang Ginger, as one would speak to a baby or perhaps a dog.

  The horse’s ears responded to her sounds even as the jaw persevered in the chewing. Ginger drew a carrot from her pocket and, laying it in her palm, brought it toward the horse’s mouth. The enormous jaw went on chewing for a few moments and then, in a grasping gesture that made Tom flinch, scooped up the carrot, crunching loudly, and recommenced chewing.