Playground Zero

by Sarah Relyea

  The orange-clad zombies passed. Crossing Telegraph Avenue, Alice lingered by the jeans shop, her glance roaming over a display of low-riding bell-bottoms and Spider-Man T-shirts, Levi’s jackets, concert posters from the Fillmore West and the Avalon Ballroom.

  Suddenly a group her age came running up, a girl and three boys. As they entered the jeans shop, one of the boys hung back, waving. He was familiar—a hippie boy she’d seen at school. They’d spoken once on the playground, and she remembered the name: Joe. He’d come across as calm, admiring, humorously askew, as he bragged about going to concerts with an older brother. Although Alice had heard the albums and seen the concert posters, Joe had actually been to the Fillmore West, or so he claimed. They were on good enough terms—though not good enough for him to wave so eagerly.

  “Hey,” Joe called. Then louder, “Valerie! Come here!” Joe’s group of junior hippies emerged like a single organism from the jeans shop.

  “What?” Valerie demanded.

  “You guys should meet,” Joe proposed. He had a long, mousy nose.

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, she’s from school.”

  “School, bummer,” mumbled one of the boys. “Let’s go.”

  “No, Jim.” Valerie was pleased by something.

  “She digs music,” Joe explained.

  “Who—Jim Morrison? The Rolling Stones?” Valerie’s eyes were blue and laughing and fearless, as if she’d already seen the world.

  “She digs everything. Right?” Joe smiled, glancing askance.

  Alice shrugged as the group leaned in, looking her over. They were very Telegraph Avenue. Valerie’s face was long and cleanly made, a sculpture jolted awake; heavy ropes of red-blonde hair hung over her baggy Spider-Man tee. Jim stood staunchly by her, eyeing Alice as though wondering where she’d come from. He was smudged and rumpled, with loose, unwashed clothes, a jagged scar on the chin and the cool, watchful eyes of a big cat. The other boy had the face of a cherub—sunny and eager, as though he’d come from a fresh woodland village before the group had found him.

  “So, you’re on the Avenue,” Joe said, nodding approvingly.

  “I’m buying a present.”

  Joe’s mouth curved in a smile. “Who for?”

  “It’s my mother’s birthday.”

  “Some incense, maybe,” the cherub boy suggested.

  “No, Chris,” murmured Joe.

  “Or some jewelry,” Valerie added, her eyes mocking.

  Then the cherub, singing in a clear soprano, led the others in a jagged round of “Happy Birthday.”

  Joe laughed. “See ya.” And he turned to go.

  The cherub hung back, adjusting the bandana around his head. “Come with us,” he suggested.

  “No, Chris,” Joe murmured again. “She’s going home—her mom.”

  “Come with us,” the cherub repeated, ignoring him.

  “Where?”

  Valerie’s face was open and challenging. “Maybe you’re scared?” she teased, smiling vaguely, as if she’d been there herself.

  Jim was moving off. “C’mon, I wanna go somewhere,” he urged.

  “Come away, fly away,” Chris was singing.

  Then Joe leaned in close, choosing her. “I’ve got something in my pocket.” He reached in a jeans pocket, grinning, conspiratorial. “Are you coming?”

  They eyed her, wondering. Chris had a sweet, sensuous mouth, rounded brows and eager, impish eyes. Alice was intrigued by the group; she must go home soon—but soon was not yet.

  “Okay.”

  “Then c’mon.”

  Joe opened a door by the jeans shop. The group jammed a small alcove, as though rushing a phone booth, and then paused, pressed together, barely breathing. Joe held up one hand, uncurling the fingers. They watched eagerly as he removed the top of a small plastic box, revealing four yellow pills.

  Alice wondered if these things were really happening—if camaraderie could really be as easy as the Berkeley Barb had promised in the weeks following People’s Park. If so, she would not be needing the Girl Scouts, or even Tammy.

  “Wow, yellow sunshine!” Jim exclaimed, grinning in eager approval, his mouth forming a long, jagged arc. “Good score, my man.”

  Joe beamed. “From my brother Paul.” Then he looked at Alice, who was leaning on Valerie’s shoulder to see. “Hey, you’ve done acid before, right?”

  Alice shrugged.

  Joe eyed her. “No fooling around. When you say you’re in, you’re in. Okay?”

  “Okay.” She’d been there before, with her brother and the boys who played baseball. The challenge was to carry through—that would keep her in the game.

  Joe doled out the pills, cleaving the final one with a thumbnail and offering it to the two girls.

  “On the tongue,” the cherub was saying. “That’s the fastest way.”

  For a moment Alice examined her palm. The tiny chunk was surely more harmless than magical—but she could always hope. Then, carefully fingering it, she placed it on her tongue and waited for a momentous change. Seconds passed; no change came. Were they sharing in a sham? Or was she somehow immune?

  Joe was by the door. “C’mon, let’s go to the campus.”

  He opened the door and the group burst free. Tumbling along, they passed the jeans shop, a head shop, the leather-goods store. Feeling the group’s energy change, Alice fought her sense that she’d swallowed a placebo—that she would be left out. Even so, she was emboldened by the group as they surged along Telegraph, weaving through the ragged burlesque of a grown-up crowd. The Avenue’s murky, rambling purposes and sensory derangement had always made her uneasy; finally she could let herself go and be immersed in the flamboyance of the scene. As they neared Bancroft Way, bordering the campus, they were engulfed by a crowd milling around a leafleting table. Flowing along with Valerie, following the boys, Alice thought, Nothing has changed, and nothing is the same. She remembered the uprooted Eden and the Barb’s foreboding claim—We are stealing everyone’s children—and laughed loudly. Valerie, who had hung back a moment, came up close. “I’m beginning to feel it,” she whispered in Alice’s ear, the words nearly drowned by the hum of cars and random sound. Hardly pausing for the signal, the crowd waded through the crossing as though the campus, the pounding conga drums, lay on a far shore. The ragtag group of sixth graders passed the border drums and was swallowed, anonymous, unseen, among the swarm jamming Sproul Plaza.

  Soon they were flowing east from Sproul, heading for the Campanile bell tower and looming hills. As they neared the Campanile, from the sky the droning of an organ poured its sonorous fog.

  “The bells!” Chris sang, gazing up, unmoored and joyful, on the echoing melody.

  The sounds were still misting as Chris and Alice ran ahead, climbing a flight of stone steps leading to Gayley Road and the Greek Theatre. She’d passed the amphitheater before, though never entering. They paused by Gayley Road, aware of being alone together, as the others wandered on the path below.

  “Where are we going?” Alice’s voice sounded far away.

  “Over there.” Chris waved a hand, and the Greek Theatre loomed, glimmering in the sun.

  There was another pealing of bells, though the clanging dropped away so soon through the trees overhanging the amphitheater that she wondered if the sounds could have been real. Gayley Road appeared to her as a commingling of many random flows, a coming together of the branching streams of her world. Her path had always been leading here, from the lazy winding of Telegraph Avenue through congealing moments, metamorphosing new and forevermore unchanging.

  “I’m going home soon,” she remembered aloud. The idea was appalling.

  “Now?” Chris laughed. “We’re gonna be way stoned.”

  “Soon, I’m going soon.” She was feeling mournful.

  A man in colorful camouflage passed by. She was sure he was overhearing her thoughts—why else would he be there? She’d just become aware of why her father was away on Saturdays, where he was going
: He was in Los Angeles, rooming with Charles. She was less sure why her father wore cowboy boots—though she’d seen them in the basement cupboard and was sure he wore them. The man in camouflage murmured in her ear as he passed, informing her of why, though the reason was overcome by more pealing bells—falling now from some eucalyptus trees on Gayley Road, falling in the wafting, twirling way of dead leaves separating forever from the branch. In any case, why had no single meaning but many meanings, all informing her of some formerly concealed but now glaring truth. Now why lay glimmering on the ground among pools of shadow—the bells would peal no more, replaced by the humming, buzzing hive of Gayley Road. Cars were coming toward them along the curve in luminous roar, passing and fading as they became caught up in trees. The campus lay below, an enormous gorge carved in the hills. She and her good comrade, Chris, had found a place merging in her mind with places she’d seen long ago from the family Chevy. The road above Santa Fe, New Mexico, foamed up through her mind, booming lavender, pulsing green and blue whenever her head moved. “Dummy, it’s where they made the Bomb,” she mumbled aloud to herself.

  Gleams exploded in her eyes, dancing in waves. A man passed on a bicycle, and she laughed to see him gliding through the world, a swimmer in some unseen ocean. They ran up—Joe, Valerie, and Jim. Alice found a oneness in the group and in the drone of cars, as the zoom of engines filled her ears, like enormous whirling bumblebees. The sky had overflowed and changed the world forever. Chris was humming by her shoulder, joining in the hive. Though they’d never seen each other before, they were comrades now. She began laughing uncontrollably.

  “Be cool,” Chris murmured.

  “Maintain, maintain,” Joe counseled.

  “But—,” Alice giggled.

  “No laughing,” Jim commanded sharply.

  She eyed him, her glance moving down the baggy clothes. He was bossing her. She giggled again.

  “Let’s go.” Valerie grabbed her arm and dragged her across Gayley Road, as cars paused solemnly to let them pass.

  Soon they were under sheer, looming cliffs—the amphitheater’s towering walls surrounding a damp, shadowy stage. The group ran on, passing through a gloomy underworld, a no-man’s-land or purgatory opening in far archways, then emerged onstage as on the surface of a pond before the sun-drenched benches of a grand arena: whirling rungs carved in the hillside beneath a flowing drapery of tree and sky. Heavy columns, seemingly ready to topple on them, rose from the stage wings.

  The boys began an impromptu dance, gliding in arcs along the smooth surface of the stage as though defying an underworld. Valerie grasped Alice’s arm, and together they ran to the edge of the stage. Off they plummeted, landing in lumpy sand. From there they heard the boys’ wild hooting and cawing as, caught in the sand, they crouched before an arena of sparkling, swarming fireflies, exploding for them alone.

  Alice could feel the clammy sand through her jeans. The hooting and cawing echoed and faded. Above the arena rose hills of eucalyptus. Luminous in the western sun, leaves shimmered purple and green, far outshining anything she’d seen before: all was good. Upper branches waving among clouds and sky; purple fronds tossing; sun flickering as though on a lake: forever was happening, and she was seeing—Now.

  The boys clambered from the ledge. Joining the girls in the orchestra pit, they dug furrows in the sand. Damp and heavy, clinging to them, the sand was a muddy, spraying surf, covering them and dragging them under.

  The group struggled free and shook away the clinging sand. Then they ran through the lower arena, the rows bending away in cascades as they moved. Coming to the border of the lower arena, they found themselves on a semi-circular walkway. Lining the walkway were thrones carved in the shape of crouching tigers, facing the stage.

  From one of the tiger thrones, Jim summoned an imaginary throng. “Hear me!” He glared around and snarled.

  A boom rose from the Gayley Road abyss; overhead danced wild eucalyptus fronds.

  “Bring in the pigs!” He paused, grinning. “Now, pigs, you’re in my power—off with your heads!”

  The group cheered. Alice was suddenly feeling alone.

  Then they climbed through the upper rows of the amphitheater. As Chris and Jim ran up the center of the arena, Joe and Valerie and Alice were struggling up the flank toward the flowing movement of tree and sky. The group came together again on the upper walkway. For a long moment they gazed west over the amphitheater on the Campanile and the lands beyond the bay. Then they crossed a damp lawn and headed for the eucalyptus groves. The way soon became rough, a pathless scramble over branches and long strands of eucalyptus bark, among treacherous acorns and fallen leaves. Even so, moving was joyous and pulsing; when Alice looked west once more, the sun had gone, leaving a luminous splash along the lower sky. Day was passing: for a moment she remembered her mother, her family, time—glancing at her watch, she saw the hands in random poses, reading only Now.

  She glanced again and saw that it was already five. Charles is coming around five. Good—her mother would be busy, she would never know . . .

  Above the bay hung a shape—an amoeba cloud, its orange-gray mass surrounded by a glowing border. As she watched, the cloud was borne slowly northward, shape-shifting, purging away a plume of smoke, its gray aftermath. The cloud faded from orange through purple and gray. Below loomed the amphitheater, a shadowy stage folded in the dampness of evening.

  “Can we go higher?” Alice wondered aloud.

  Joe laughed, holding up useless hands. “All gone.”

  “No, I mean—” She paused. The boy’s face had a glowing sheen. She was feeling confused—why would she want more of the drug? How could he fail so utterly to grasp her meaning?

  Feeling alone, she looked west and saw clouds simmering, the ocean on fire. Beyond the looming columns of the Greek Theatre, the sky was pulsing orange from the sulfurous candle now burning beneath the Golden Gate. An underworld had been loosed on the bay, churning the waters in a dull aluminum glow. A conclusive, dying blue, echoing ever deeper and more somber through the hum, was spreading over the sky.

  Chris could be heard, hollering, “. . . down . . . !” The words seeped away. “Jim . . . running down!”

  The cry had come from beyond some trees. Joe moved off, leaving Alice to stumble here and there, looking for Valerie. She crossed the clearing, gnarled roots snagging her feet, and found the other girl closely examining a eucalyptus tree, fingering the trunk and peeling gray-green bark. A rope of curling ivy leaves dangled overhead from a single clinging vine; bark lay strewn in long curls on the ground among sickle-shaped leaves. A pungent odor rose from the mess.

  “They’re running down the path, let’s go,” Joe called to Valerie.

  There were shouts as Chris and Jim descended the hill, running, hands waving. Soon the others found the path and headed down the hill. Alice could feel her legs moving and let them go, winged and free, sure of landing, alighting once more on earth. Even so, the ground was damp and treacherous; now and then her feet caught among mud and leaves, though somehow she refused to fall. Then suddenly, in a slow tumble she was sliding down the path. When she’d reached level ground, she rose unperturbed: the mud pleased her.

  They gathered once more by Gayley Road. She’d been meaning to leave—once upon a time, so long ago. There was no longer any rush.

  “I wanna go somewhere,” Jim announced. Then he shrugged, as though reaching a foregone conclusion. “Telegraph. The Caffé Med.”

  “Yeah,” Valerie added. “Dan’s there. I’m hungry.”

  Evening engulfed the campus. They passed by the Campanile, but the bells were sleeping. The fleeing hours had been a dream, a mirage—or had they? Alice glanced up. The clock tower rose high and oddly meaningless, though it read half past six o’clock.

  Back on Telegraph Avenue the evening revelry was gathering speed. Alice had never been there in the evening without her family shepherding her through the wild and melancholy bughouse crowd, who surged around in eager wel
come of Jim and Valerie and the young freaks—a joyous and infernal homecoming, even for Alice. Though just now encountering the revel, she was already Berkeley bred, immersed in the mood of madness. So easy and so soon—she’d hardly even been looking.

  Orange glow poured from above, searching for her. She passed under the glare and was overwhelmed by a sense of seeing and being seen. Faces flowed laughing by, eyes honing in on her, acknowledging her: a playful hunting game had begun. Shoulders lunged toward her, then passed anonymously on. She could roam freely here . . .

  A leaflet waved its message in a cone of orange glow. She wandered through the glow to read and, without warning, slammed a pole. Woozy, she stumbled on following her group, as passersby welcomed them.

  Three men draped in an American flag came parading by. An oily dampness was oozing over her face, cooling her. She must go . . .

  She would spend her money and go home. Anything she bought now would do. She paused, conjuring up images of the house—foyer and dining room, where a single candle concealing her mother’s age would just now be exploding in fireworks. Ah, of course—by the time she got back the day would be done, and Charles would be gone. A feeling of melancholy overcame her—would she ever be her mother’s age?

  A man was leaning on a car, smelling a single rose. As Alice passed by, wondering sadly if she’d ever see a rose again, he plucked away some dabs of red and nibbled carefully, like a rabbit chewing on the color of blood. A dog ran up, paused in mid-growl, nosed the flower and ran on, head wagging among the odors in a random dance. For a moment the man went on nibbling; then he swayed down the pavement, leaving an odor of decomposing bloom. Caught in the eddy, Alice spun around.