The sun had
dropped below the horizon. Its last rays
furnished the backdrop for three silhouettes running along the top of the box
car.
I jumped
from one car to the next exclaiming, “Yee Haw! Jesse James ain’t got nothin’ on
me!”
I took to
the air again, aloft over the space between cars. ID and GH were ahead running toward the lights
of the fairgrounds.
“Shut up
Croucher!” one of them yelled.
“Why? I ‘ve
always wanted to do this but it would be so much more fun if this train were
moving.” I ran faster and jumped farther hitting the roof with a thud. GH was slipping down the ladder attached to
the side. I stopped above their descent.
“Why are you
stopping?” I asked looking down at the two of them dropping to the ground.
“You
idiot. Didn’t you see the lights come on
in the caboose?” I looked two cars down to see there was a light in the window
of the caboose.
I dropped to
the car’s roof and grabbed the railing.
Slipping over the side I caught the rung
with my penny loafer and slipped down to the ground. The train had been stationary in the train
yard behind the fair grounds.
“Hey guys!”
I whispered. “Let’s slip into one of the
cars and go to sleep. Wherever we wake
up we’ll find a job.” I said this while
grabbing the latch to the side door.
There was a metal tag attached that assured the door would stay closed
not allowing drunks like me in.
“Ah,
hell. There’s a damn lock on this
thing. GH got your knife?”
“Get the
hell away from that thing.”
The door to
the caboose was easing open. A ray of light was widening along the ground just
beyond the three of us.
“Run for it!”
ID yelled. We sprinted for the gate of
the Fairground hopping tracks, zipping between rail cars and finally through
the gate.
“Man, wouldn’t
it have been wild to have been running along top of that thing with the air
mingled with smoke and sparks rushing past?
Wow! To be a train robber in the 1800’s, what a thrill that would have
been.”
GH looked at
me in the lights of the rides and carnie attractions. “You know you wouldn’t even think about that
sober don’t you?” His tall lanky frame
loped along the path dodging kids with cotton candy and couples carrying
stuffed animals won at the penny toss. A
lock of jet black hair bounced over his blue eyes with each step.
“Well,
maybe. Which reminds me, it’s time for
another beer. Who’s buying?” I looked at the two of them hopefully.
ID who wore
his blonde hair in a flattop looked over at me with that smile the girls at JHIS
swooned over saying, “You, since you brought it up.”
“OK, if you
put it that way let’s find a booth.” I
searched my pockets for the money.
ID pointed
out the beer stall.
“Three
beers!” GH yelled into the window. His presence always assured our purchases of
beer. Though he was seventeen he looked
older. The guy behind the glass
partition didn’t give a damn as long as the money was real and the correct
amount, but I didn’t know that.
We took our
paper cups with foam streaming down the side.
I sipped that foam.
“Don’t want
to waste any of that stuff’” I said and slipped into a rhyme, saying,
“I think
that I shall never hear
A poem
lovely as beer.
The stuff
they brew at Joe’s on tap
With golden
base and snowy cap
The stuff I
drink all day
Till my
memory melts away.”
GH and ID
joined in at the end and three voices crooned.
“Poems are
made by fools I fear
But only
Budweiser can make a beer.”
The final
punch was a gale of laughter which opened up the crowd somewhat for us as we
plowed our way along the fairway.
“You and
your poetry,” said GH.
“Well we
need the finer stuff of life as well as just meat and potatoes,” I replied.
“What next?”
It was ID looking around and asking. “The
mighty mouse? The Srambler? The roller coaster? The Ferris wheel?”
“Hell
no! Not the Ferris wheel!” I
shouted. I had had a very bad experience
one year long ago with the, then, love of my life. A terribly, terribly embarrassing moment I
could never forget. I know she didn’t
and chuckles about it to this day.
“Ferris
wheel it is then,” they said together.
“You guys
go.” I chugged my beer down. “I need another beer. I’ll meet you over at the beer wagon.”
They laughed
at me. Called me chickenshit and walked
off to the wheel. I wandered over to the
beer wagon wondering if he would sell me one without GH with me.
I got to the
site and stood in line. It slowly moved forward. The man in front of me grabbed his drink and
moved off to the right. I stepped up to
the window and the guy behind the glass looked down at me.
“Remember
me?” He looked at me with indifferent eyes
“Yeah, what’ll
it be? Three beers, right?” He smiled and poured three cups full.
“Uh,
yeah. Three beers.” I pulled three bills from my wallet and
passed them through. He shoved three
full cups at me. As I was trying to
decide how to drink and carry three beers the guy behind me was shoving me
aside.
“Hey, hang
on. I gotta get my drinks.”
“Well gettum
and get the hell out of the way,” he said as he handed his money through the
window and ordered.
“Gimme a
second.” I stood on tiptoe to reach the cups and managed to grasp all three. I eased them off the counter and lowered
myself off my toes.
In his haste
to leave the guy shoved me hard enough to slosh most of the contents of all
three cups onto my shirt and jeans.
“Whatchit!”
I yelled.
“Whassat
buddy? Wanna make sump’m outtuv it?”
“Wait a
minute. I gotta drink these beers first. Then maybe.”
Holding all
three in two hands I tilted them to drink.
It worked for the one in front but as I swallowed the golden brew from
that cup the other two poured their contents onto my shirt. The smell of beer reeked from my clothes.
The guy was
standing there waiting but when he saw the display and smelled the aroma from
my soaking clothes he began to slap his knee while hee-hawing like the jackass
he was. I salvaged what I could of the
remaining beer tossing the cups on the ground.
Seeing his response was total collapse in mirth I walked, or rather
sloshed since my shoes were filled with beer, toward the Ferris wheel.
“Rickey! Hey
Rickey!”
I heard the
shouts and looked around. Through the
crowd I saw a college buddy weaving a path toward me.
“TI! Whatcha
doing here?”
“I was gonna
get a beer. Want one?” He asked as he
approached.
“I had three
already,” I said pointing to my clothes.
“I was
thinkin’ drinkin’ not wearin’,” he chuckled.
TI was my
height and tightly wound. He always
liked a beer or three to unwind a bit.
His coil seemed to be somewhat loose.
“Looks like
you already had a few.”
“One or
five. I’m not sure. Going for two or
six. You?”
“Sure.” I followed him over to the beer wagon. We’d gone to most of the pledge parties and drunk
a lot of free beer on the fraternities’ dime.
A drinking buddy is a helluva buddy we had decided after the fourth of
fifth party during rush week. And yet we never got drunk enough to join.
“Two!” The guy behind the window looked at me and
shook his head. He poured them and
shoved the cups to the edge of the shelf.
TI slipped the money in and grabbed the beer cups.
I took mine.
I drank mine. He was astonished at the gusto with which I did.
“Another?”
he asked.
“Why not?”
He motioned.
It was poured. It was drunk as TI sipped on his.
“One more
and you’ll be caught up,” he said.
“Ookie
dookie.” I took it and poured it down me
gullet.
“Is there a
can around?” I asked, a sudden pressure made the question an urgent one.
He
pointed. I ran.
I saw GH and
ID as I made my way back to the wagon.
“Hey guys, I
want you to meet my buddy, TI. We met at
C of C.”
They
exchanged names, handshakes and greetings as I walked to the window again. I walked back with two beers pointing at the
two still on the counter. GH and ID went
to fetch them.
The night
became a bit mellow after that beer and a bit sketchy.
Bits and
pieces come and go.
“Know any
girls we can get together with TI?” maybe it was GH who said it.
“Mt Pleasant…”
maybe TI said. “Green….”
“…ride over…my
car…in…”
The fairgrounds
were gone. The backseat of a 65 chevy
station wagon surrounded me. I looked to
the right and telephone posts whip whip whip whipped past.
“This is a
hell of a big car ID,” came out of my mouth.
“Hell yeah…the
old man’s station wagon….flies too,” he shouted above the roar of wind blasting
through the window.
“I think I
could lie down door to door without touching either side,” I shouted back.
“Yeah…wide…”
came back in broken syllables.
“Where we
goin’?” I shouted.
“Girl…over…Pleasant…”
I caught buffeted by the wind.
I was forced
back into the seat as the land yacht went nearly vertical.
“What the….” I tried to shout.
“Cooper…bridge…to…’s…house…,”
the wind again whipping away half the
conversation. I pulled myself forward. It was like an astronaut’s attempt to reach the
throttle as lift off commences. I
strained to grab the seat in front of me.
Inching along until I finally hooked my fingers onto the top of ID’s
seat. Pulling with all my strength I
slid forward ever so slowly to see out the windshield. We were headed straight up into the girders
of the Cooper River Bridge. The first
leg of the first hump of that old rattle trap narrow two lane bit of highway
held above the gray waters of the Cooper River Bridge on a cold October night,
or early morning.
“What the
hell ID? What the Hell? Where we goin’?” I shouted into the wind pouring through his
open window. The blasting cold iced my
veins. I pulled closer to the front and
looked at the speedometer. It read 80
and climbing. “You’re doing eighty
freakin’ miles an hour on this freakin’ bridge?! Are you crazy?!”
Laughter broken
by tornado like gusts of wind met my ears.
Cars whizzed past in the blink of an eye in the lane to the left on
their way to Charleston. In a minute of
time we hit the crest of the first hump to be followed by a stomach stealing
drop of the steep incline that slammed me into the back of the front seat.
“Watchit…driv…here…”
I caught
snatches of ID’s sentence in the terror of that second seeing the cars flying
toward us and feeling gravity’s pull accelerated by 350 horses pressed to the
max. And then things went dark.
My eyes
opened. I was in the back seat
alone. We were parked in someone’s
driveway. I leaned back into the
seat. Things went dark once again.
When next my
eyes opened I looked out the car window to see my house.
“Hey,
Croucher, wake up. You’re home. Time to get out.”
“What time
is it?”
“Soon be
time for the sun to come up.”
“Oh,
hell. I gotta get inside.”
“See ya!
Wouldn’t wanna be ya,” they yelled. ID
woke the neighborhood laying a three yard strip of rubber from his daddy’s
tires. I was greeted with dogs barking
as the paper boy turned into the drive and tossed the paper. Right on target as my head received a
whack. And the hangover began.
