Playground Zero

by Sarah Relyea

  Jim had begun snuffling and refused to respond. Valerie slouched, parting a heavy golden curl as though separating the strands of a rope.

  When they reached home, Carol produced a small footlocker. Valerie rounded up clothes as Jim examined an old cap gun he’d unearthed from under the bed. She heaped the clothes in the trunk, wondering if this sudden turn of events was real or if she would have to undo everything in the morning. When she was through, Jim flung the gun on top. Then he sat on the footlocker as she fastened the clamps in place.

  Valerie was suddenly fed up. “Now see what you made her do.”

  “She’ll be sorry.”

  “Not sorry enough.”

  “So what?”

  “So, what’s Dad gonna do when he sees us?”

  “He’s gonna be happy. Why?”

  The following day, Carol drove them to the Greyhound terminal in Denver and put them on a bus for California. They had the footlocker and a brown paper bag with apples, bread, and jam. The bus departed in the morning; the bread and jam were gone by noon. Then there came a long, slow, rumbling ride, with nothing more to do until they pulled up in Salt Lake City at nearly nine in the evening. There they found a man who bought them ice cream and told them the Lord would be generous to those who were good. Returning to the bus, they passed a small fountain in the shape of a roebuck, with water pouring from its mouth into a shallow pool. Coins glowed dully beneath the surface. Jim leaned over and scooped up some water.

  “No!”

  He leaned in and drank, long and cool. A few drops splashed on his cheek, as though they were in a rainy woods. There was a jerking in his leg as though he would run. Valerie grabbed him by the arm and he looked up.

  “Hey, lemme go.”

  “No, we’re staying together.”

  “I’ve had enough of the bus. I wanna run.”

  “Come here.”

  Valerie had brought a bag of candy. She reached in her jacket and brought out a candy bar; breaking off a chunk, she dangled it for Jim.

  “You can run tomorrow, when we get there.”

  Feeling a surge of energy, he leaped for the candy. He would be ready to run when the chance came.

  Back on the bus, Valerie dozed. By morning, they’d passed the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada, and by early afternoon they pulled into Oakland.

  A large, lean man showed up for the bus. He was tardy, though not by much.

  Valerie remembered her father, but vaguely; in any case, he’d changed: beads and sandals, a fringy purple vest, heavy golden strands like her own. She’d never known a man who wore no lumberjack gear but colorful cloth flowing everywhere. For some moments she was confused, then glad. But Jim was uncustomarily shy; the man who met them by the bus was no longer Hawk but the scorned and unfamiliar father, Dan Dupres.

  Soon Valerie and Jim found themselves living on the second floor of a house in North Berkeley. Dan hadn’t been there long, barely long enough to round up furnishings. He scrounged the beds from a woman he knew from the Movement, trading marijuana for them. Some rough army wool soon appeared along with the beds, though there were few other comforts. The army wool was heavy and scratchy. Valerie began sleeping in her clothes; then she would wear them wherever she had to go. Soon she’d forgotten the rhythm of changing clothes morning and evening. There was no more wondering what to wear: her corduroy jeans and Spider-Man top had become permanent, dead growth, armor against the world. When she was hungry, she searched the cupboard for tea bags and honey. Tea and honey made a warm syrup.

  When they reached California, school had already begun. Dan enrolled them in fourth and fifth grades. Her brother had always been a handful: he fought with other boys, he needed management. Dan was busy on Telegraph Avenue; he had the jeans shop to run, he had the Movement, he had a woman named Wanda—enough to do every day, and more. In the evening, Dan and Wanda gathered around the table, smoking and peeling oranges and talking about the campus war. The country beyond was gearing up for the 1968 election: the farce of democracy, another turn of the wheel. There was war everywhere, and much to do.

  FROM THE EARLY days, Jim managed to follow the father’s unfamiliar ways. He’d never followed anyone’s ways; but Dan demanded only that they care for themselves, not interfering with him or Wanda. Jim was happy for once, free to come and go from the North Berkeley apartment and the jeans shop on Telegraph Avenue. Even so, in the beginning he had no other boys to run with while Dan and Wanda were endlessly rapping, planning for the campus war. There was only the group that hung around near the shop on evenings when the place was closed. Soon enough, though, things were really jamming: they’d taken over Moses Hall—he’d heard of Moses—demanding that a Black Panther be made a professor; they’d closed off the border of the campus, and no one could pass unless Ray-gun and the Regents gave up the classrooms to them.

  Jim was cool with all the commotion. He had no use for the classrooms he’d seen. He was eager to hang with other boys or wander through the hallways, where he found the strange ones, who wanted to sell him oregano or do something with him in the bathroom. He would play along; he was eager to learn new things, and he could always run. On the playground, he found a handful of boys like himself, and as long as they were there, the lunch hour was fun. They saw him as a leader: he could scare the other boys by doing things they’d never do. The professors’ sons could talk, but he could whup them easy. Only the black guys were ready for a hassle. Jim refused to walk away from a fight; that made him a badass, and more guys would run up to challenge him. That was becoming a real problem—black guys could do some pounding. They made fun of his unwashed jeans and lengthening hair, they shoved and taunted, sneering “cracker” or “girly.” Some days he felt so mad he needed revenge, so he turned on the easy boys, the professors’ sons, and made them run. Sure enough the principal would haul him in.

  Jim was looking for some boys to go home with, where they would see the programs he remembered from the house in Colorado, rough men with guns, and he would urge them on and plan for when he’d become a man. For sure, he would do something dangerous. Every day in California he heard Dan and Wanda rapping about the overseas war, and he wanted to go—even though they were planning to stop it. He wondered what that meant, stopping the war—Hawk had never rapped that way. Sure enough, Jim would be a gun-toting badass in army rags; no one would end the war before he’d had a chance. One day he even hollered that in class and the teacher freaked, saying he was an angry boy. He wondered what that meant, too. Angry was just something he was, no reason for her to be so bummed.

  Dan never argued about school problems, the way Carol had. He and Wanda would say school was something they used to control you, keep you down. Some of the boys in class were as good as dead—never hassled the teacher, barely moved. Jim observed them, knowing he could never be stuffed game like the black bear in Colorado, the one he remembered from the bar.

  And so, it was easy, dealing with Dan. Jim and Valerie went together to Telegraph Avenue, and when Dan was in the jeans shop, there would be people coming up and down the Avenue looking for him, looking for something other than jeans. Sometimes they would collar Jim, rapping like he was already a man, asking about Dan’s side stuff. Jim wondered and observed, focused on learning what he could. He and Valerie had a good thing and no hassles. He saw the boys from the suburbs with straight, phony parents, people you’d see on TV, the father pulling the boy by the arm and the mother shielding his eyes from the likes of Jim. Why they even came to Berkeley, he would never know.

  Soon he was smoking grass with some older guys on the Avenue; then he really began hearing about what went down in the back of the jeans shop.

  The Avenue was a whole world, with something always happening and no one ragging on him. Whenever Valerie rapped about Colorado, he glared—that whole scene was gone. No use looking back. Now he could barely sleep for wondering what was happening on the Avenue. They’d done so much already: the bus through the mountains from Denver, aw
ake in the dark, then through the valley and over some low mountains just like the olden days in the covered wagons. Then the bay, the Golden Gate, and far beyond the sea—China. He’d heard Wanda laugh, saying “Red China” and something about a guy named Mao—a sound like mooing, or a faraway foghorn. There was no foghorn in Colorado—only forest and snow, shining on the peaks even in summer. Hawk bragged about skiing, but they had no money for that. Now they’d found a place where things happened even when there was no money for making them happen.

  EVERY AFTERNOON WHEN the school bell rang, Valerie found Jim on the playground, and together they made their way to Telegraph Avenue and Dan’s shop. She was always glad to be away from school, where the other girls regarded her as outlandish. Dan had bestowed new jeans on her and Jim, but they were never laundered and soon became scuffed and grimy. Jim was proud of the shiny grunge, wearing it as a freak flag, but the schoolgirls spurned Valerie for pushing the same jeans on them every day. Soon she began maneuvering for another pair. Hanging around the shop, she learned from Wanda how to help a customer, offering suggestions or showing them to the changing room through the hanging beads in the back. And as they stood barefoot before the mirror, she learned how to close the deal, saying, “You look far-out!”

  One day, when she thought she’d done enough for a reward, she told Wanda how Dan had promised more jeans. Wanda rummaged on a shelf for some bell-bottoms with colored thread on the seams. “How about these?” she said with a shrug, tossing them on the counter. The pants hung loosely on Valerie but she loved them; for three weeks she hardly removed them. Soon the girls were staring through her again and she returned to the old jeans, now fresh and clean from all the scrubbing she’d done one evening in the bathroom.

  “What the hell are ya doin’?” Jim demanded, when he saw her through the bathroom doorway.

  “A woman has to work for beauty,” she said, and laughed, holding up the pants for him to look. “See—they’re new again!”

  “Wanda show ya how to wash ’em?”

  “No. I showed me.”

  “You wash mine?”

  “You’re such a bummer.”

  “Does that mean yes?”

  “That means no.”

  Holding up the soggy pants, she ran across the wooden floor and hung them by the window. Jim followed her. “Those girls are never gonna talk to you, even with clean pants,” he announced.

  Dan nodded and laughed. “No one on the Avenue has clean clothes. You can hang out there.”

  So Valerie passed many hours on the Avenue, and when there was nothing else to do, she wandered into the shop, where Dan would be, always gabbing with someone. She wanted to hear him because everyone admired him. Long and handsome, he leaned on the counter telling the freaks who dropped by how he’d come from volunteers who fought for the Republic of Texas. Ranching and anarchy were the forces they knew. He’d grown up there and gone to army school, and then he’d worked in the weapons plant in Colorado.

  In army school, Dan had learned how to plan and carry out a campaign. When he’d arrived in Berkeley, in 1965, other planners were already on the scene, scheming to stop the transport of troops through Oakland. He’d always dreamed of blowing up supply lines. He remembered the opening scene from a book—an American in Spain moving among guerrilla bands, coming to blow up a bridge and then moving on.

  One day, during a lull in the protest campaign, he’d landed another machinist job and suddenly the money was flowing. Running machinery and selling marijuana, he’d saved enough to open the shop. Jeans were the coming thing; jeans were everywhere, and everyone was buying them.

  Though the cops regarded Dan as a rabble-rouser, he could fade away if the scene got ugly. He parlayed the shopkeeper thing into the role of Telegraph Avenue spokesman, becoming leader of the amorphous group of young people encamped on the four blocks south of campus. He’d never gone to college, but now he’d show up for the leafleting and rallies in Sproul Plaza; leaving Wanda or Valerie in the shop, he’d run to campus, weaving through the throng, hobnobbing, sharing news.

  As the weeks passed, Valerie forgot her mother and Hawk. She was no longer bummed at Jim for making them leave Colorado. Soon enough, she’d be going to the Fillmore West with Arlene and Bobby, who hung around the jeans shop rapping with Dan. Then there’d be no more brushoff from the lousy schoolgirls—she’d have something over them. On the Avenue, she only had to say, “Dan is my father,” and she was golden. Never before had she been found so worthy. People from the Derby Street commune were always ready to rap or offer her scraps of food or even money for carrying someone’s stash. People in the flophouse rooms over the shop found her amusing, and she learned what would amuse. All afternoon she and Jim ran up and down, playing with the older group, experiencing new things, passing under the radar of undercover narcs. Then in the evening when the shop was closed, they’d grab a sandwich at the Caffé Med before heading through the campus to Dan and Wanda’s.

  COPS SWARMED THE Avenue and surrounding blocks, harassing the freaks for drugs and panhandling and wearing the flag in the wrong place—on the ass. Every few days there was another hassle, but then the charges would be dropped. Valerie was eleven years old and Jim a year younger; though wary of narcs, they were no runaways with nowhere to go: they belonged to Dan and the Avenue.

  Jim hung with Bobby, who hung with Arlene when Marlboro Man was in Canada on a run. Bobby needed a lookout when there was a deal going down over Dan’s shop, and so he showed Jim how to confuse a narc. The cops would leave him alone because he was so young, Bobby assured him; then Bobby would reward him for being so useful.

  One day as Jim rambled along the block, surveying the cars for undercover narcs, he saw Bobby signaling for him. Turning, he wandered seemingly at random along the pavement, meandering finally by the doorway where Bobby lounged, thumb and forefinger pinching a cigarette.

  “There’s a key coming in,” Bobby murmured, eyes scanning the block. “If you see anything come down, call me from the shop.”

  “No problem. Always ready to help.”

  “Hey, you’re a buddy.”

  Then Bobby was gone. Jim had made one save so far: the narc had come sniffing around during a deal, and Jim told Dan and Dan placed a call, hanging up after one ring. That was to let Bobby know of the uncool presence. Now Bobby was very much a buddy, one moreover who gave rewards. In the beginning Jim was scared, but no more: he imagined a force or energy around them, keeping the cops from Bobby.

  Jim rambled on, passing a head shop, then he wandered through the cars on Telegraph, heading for the Caffé Med. The undercover narc who hung at the Med had gone home; everyone knew him, anyway. Jim turned back, pausing to glance at some beads and pendants arranged on a small table. The woman by the table leaned over, fingering a pendant. “Aries? Sagittarius?” she inquired, as though he had money to buy something. He could grab some beads from the woman and run—but no, he’d promised Bobby.

  As Jim was moving along, Valerie emerged from the doorway of the jeans shop, gnawing on an apple. Seeing her and the apple, Jim remembered he was hungry. He crossed Telegraph on the fender of a passing car, running up to Valerie.

  “Hey, lemme have some!”

  She was already long and gangly. “Come and get it.”

  He jumped and grabbed the apple and bit off a chunk.

  “There’s food at the Derby house!” Valerie announced triumphantly. “If you’re so hungry, let’s go now.”

  “Unh-unh, I’m spying on narcs.”

  “How about you go and I’ll do some spying. I can eat later.”

  “No way, I promised Bobby.”

  “As long as it’s one of us, Bobby won’t care.”

  “I told you, no way.”

  “Then stay here,” Valerie said, shrugging. “I’ll bring some food from the house.”

  “Do that.”

  She ran off toward the Derby Street commune. Jim glanced after her and then the other way. Narcs could be anywhere; they
could remember who they’d seen and collar him later.

  Wham! The door slammed as a man appeared on the sidewalk. He was tall and lean and wearing black leather pants and a vest. He had a bushy mustache and shades, long sideburns and a ponytail. Though Jim had never seen him before, sure enough he was Bobby’s man. Bobby would follow soon. The man sauntered past a head shop, as though he saw no one, as though there was no one to be seen. Jim gaped, gorging on envy. The dude swaggered, the leather taut and shiny over his ass—permanent anatomy, the leather seemed—as he waded through a lane of moving cars, lingering as the lane slowed, pausing to finger a cigarette, cupping his hands as though he would trumpet a charge and then dropping the match by the bumper of a car, exhaling, idle, as the sun rebounded from the shades. Then he sauntered on down the Avenue and through the open door of a record shop, blending into the gloom and the throbbing beat.

  Soon Bobby was in the doorway, glancing around for Jim. Jim moved slowly, learning to saunter as the other had done.

  “C’mon!” Bobby hissed in an urgent undertone. “Hurry up.”

  Jim followed him through the doorway and up several steps. Bobby turned. He pulled out some crumpled bills and thrust one into Jim’s hand. “Tell Dan, no more scoring from that dude.”

  “No?”

  “I got a bad feeling.”

  “He do something?”

  “No, man, but I got a feeling.” Bobby was angry. “Run along now. I got stuff to do.”

  Bobby ran up the steps.

  When Jim arrived at the communal house, the dinner revel was on, something shameless.

  DAN AND WANDA had much to say about the surrounding land and the people who’d been there before the coming of the Anglos. Gathered around the table, they would rap about the Costanoan Indians and the Spanish and Mexican army men who’d enslaved them on ranchos stolen from the Costanoans’ old woodlands. Then the Anglos had conquered the land through warfare, and Gold Rush men had moved in, squatting on the ranchos, exploiting the land’s bounty for themselves, until the US government and its courts agreed to another massive rip-off, giving them ownership of the land simply because they’d been using it.