(no subject)

[emchy]

a short piece i wrote a while back - glimpse into cindy @ 17

“Sitting in the waiting room, I wait I wait I wait..” the words crackle through the old truck speakers, the sound quality frazzled by countless teenage park rangers rocking their way through an otherwise mind deadening shift at the Howell City Park and Cemetery. The song blends into some other newer and more bland alterna track and I start flipping the dial to all the regular stations that I turn to as I make my rounds. I try to avoid the aggro stations, keeping in mind how well music travels over the lake, and through the cemetery itself. It is about 6:30am and I stop the truck to change the stations without driving off the narrow dirt road and into the lake. Everything is still. I hear a shadow of music bounce across the lake from a fishing boat about 200 yards away. Smiling to myself, I note that they must be kids fishing, since with that music on they’re not going to catch the fish, just scare them. My animal right activist side gives an inner thumbs up to the inexperience of young fishers.

I start the red ranger truck up again, time to run the rounds, the boat launch will be open in 15 minutes.

The boat launch, the city beach, the city park and the main city cemetery have all been here for at least 100 years, the cemetery even dates back to the 1700’s. These are my territories to patrol, to protect, and to confiscate the beer from. Sounds like a big responsibility for a 16 year old. Especially a punk rock 16 year old in a small town full of yahoos who don’t take well to those who are different. Funny, it’s not. It’s an easy cake walk of a job, and most of my time is spent skipping rocks across the lake with lifeguards or the boat launch guard with my rainbow of hair tucked under my official City Park baseball cap.

Guard is a strong word. One that doesn’t really apply here. Judi works the boat launch and park guard booth. Some days she rangers too. About the most serious thing she does is ask people for a dollar to launch their boat, or to enter the park. Other than that, it’s all about napping on the job, or listening to music. On the slowest days we even turned the guard booths into graffiti art projects, which we later spent hours repainting the ugliest shade of blue I have ever seen.

Today I am feeling struck by how beautiful the lake is. A strong fresh smell of trees, dirt and water is blowing in the air, and everything feels alive. This means it is almost fall. The trees never smell so vibrant as when they are about to die for the winter. It is a last gasp, a dance to remind you of the beauty that will come again in May, when they go from brown skeletons, to lush heady green mirrors of life renewing and living again.

Starting the truck back up, it is loud and the exhaust rips a swath of man made harsh through the nature smells. Somehow though, it still fits. Like smells of grease and tractors on farms. I drive, jostling, bouncy under canopies of leaves about to turn, curves of dirt road, kickback trail of dust behind me like a bridal train, I turn onto the asphalt of public roads, and turn off again into the boat launch.

Judi is here. Blue Festiva parked near the booth, radio blasting the Smiths as she spins around, sheepish and smiling as she hears me pull onto the gravel. The sound of the ranger truck is unmistakable, and besides she saw me tearing around the cemetery, right before I got to her.

“How long have you been here?” she asks me knowingly. We had been out until 4am the night before and I crashed at her house. She knew that I had left there at just 6, to try to make my shift as on time as possible. She had gotten to her post over an hour late. We were the old timers though. Had been here for three summers consecutively, and no one else, not even the lifeguards could boast that. So we were above suspicion. Thus we were always late and being pretty irresponsible.

Plus, her mom even worked for the city. We never had a lot to worry about as far as this job was concerned.

“Been here since 6:15 about. Do you want anything for breakfast?” One of my duties as ranger was also to be the official GOfer for the park staff. Get lunches, dinners, relieve them so they could go on break. “Nah, I’m ok. Want some soda?” she asked. “Sure” I said and took the offered Diet Coke.

We walked together over to the back of the truck, which was facing the water, and pulled the back door of the truck bed down to sit on it. Fumbling with my pocket, I finally maneuvered my cigarettes out, and put one of my bargain basement tobaccos between my lips while I hunted for matches. She handed me her lighter.

She always had a very particular way of smoking. She wore a lot of lipstick, even when it was supposed to look like she wasn’t. And so to not get her lipstick smudged, or to get any on her fingers, she would pucker her lips when she inhaled and hold the cigarette in the middle. This meant that she broke a lot of cigarettes while she smoked them.

We sat together and smoked for a while. The Smiths were still singing away, running down her car battery. “So Cindy, I was looking through my bag this morning and I found this weird brand of cigarettes, are they yours?” she asked me, all innocent as she pulled them out of her bag. I nearly fell over laughing. “Jude, don’t you remember? You took those from the striped sweater man” She smiled at me like she almost was getting the joke, but not quite.

“Ok, last night, when we were at the concert and Daisy Chainsaw was done playing, we went downstairs into the Shelter, that club underneath St. Andrews Hall, do you remember that?” I asked her.

“Uh Huh”.

“So we were down there, you Kima and I and we were all tripping crazy, jumpin on the lighted dots on the floor and such and you were getting really thirsty and we were all out of cigarettes. I asked you to find me a smoke, since you were feeling really social. So you walked over to the bar, and were leaning there as if to order a drink.

This guy had left his drink at the bar next to him, with his smokes, but he was turned a little, talking to his friend. It was pretty crowded, so he didn’t notice you at first. Kima was off staring at the wall, but I saw you, pick up his drink, take a drink of it and turn like you were walking away with it, then you took a cigarette from his pack, put it in your mouth and pocketed the rest. All of this you did as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

So the guy, he turns back to get his drink, and he’s all um... and then he sees you. So he turns to you, and says “ hey, you just took my cigarettes” and you said “no I didn’t” and he says, “yes you did, you’ve got it in your mouth right now, and you took my drink too, my friend saw you” he is kind of incredulous, but being playful and joking about it.

I think that he was hoping you were flirting with him. He was a pretty yuppified guy in this gothic industrial club, so I think he was trying hard to play it cool. So then you just let loose on him. You’re all yelling at him “listen mr. strip-ed sweater man, this is my drink, and these are my smokes and you can just forget about it my. strip-ed sweater man. I know you’re trying to get one over on me and let me tell you it is not going to work.”

Meanwhile I am cracking up, but trying not to, because I know they are his. I know you took them, and you do too, but you are playing it cool and crazy and I am just getting the biggest kick out of it. Meanwhile Kima is looking scared, and trying not to get distracted from the wall. So now the guy is getting upset, but he starts to gather that we’re on something, so he stays calm, “can I at least have one of my cigarettes? you can have the rest, I just want a smoke”

So you start to tear into him again, and I stop you asking “Hey can I bum a smoke?” and sweet as pie you shift gears and say “oh sure honey, do you want more than one? want some of my drink, anything you want” and then he thinks that you’re mellowing out and asks you for a single cigarette again saying “but the whole pack is mine can I just have one?” finally you just say “no mr. strip-ed sweater man and you need to go!” and walk towards the pool table in the back of the club.

He stopped me and asked me if I would talk to you. I just shrugged and said “sorry mr. strip-ed sweater man, nothing I can do” and then lit my cigarette as I followed you. So Judi, those are Mr. Strip-Ed Sweater man’s cigarettes in your bag”

“Oh” she said, completely nonplused by the recounting of last nights events, but somewhat amused by herself, “well I don’t smoke regular cigarettes, do you want them?” she asked.

“Sure” I said, taking them and putting them in my front pocket as I laughed in my Judi way. An amusement that is always filled with incredulity, a little bit of shock and untold amounts of affection.

We sit quietly on the truck for a while longer. I doze on and off. Around 10 I figure I should go and see if the beach is ready to open yet. The air smells like sand and summer. There is an urgency in the crowd of about 50 people at the beach when it opens. Everyone can feel the fall in the air. The light getting golden, the melon festival approaching. Only about a week to finish up summer vacation, and these families are trying to squeeze in as much as they can.

I feel lazy and sleepy. Excited by more crazy nights ahead with Judi. College begins back up in a few weeks and then it’s just weeks spent with literature and nights spent traveling to Detroit to get into trouble. Sometimes we might even get in trouble in Lansing, near my house. We both know though, how much harder it is, to enjoy the trouble when it’s snowy.

When smoking means freezing with the car windows down and the heater on full blast. You can’t smoke in anyone’s home, but every diner is 24 hours and at 1am, filled with the smell of coffee and cigarettes and freaky kids from all over the state trying to fuel up and get their rebels out before they have to drive the 45 minutes back to their podunk town.

For now though, we are having fun ruffling some of the feathers in our own podunk town. As I drive through the cemetery on patrol as I head back to the Boat Launch, but this time, Prince is playing, and I can feel that this is a moment, that perfectly captures this job and this time, and I won’t forget, not even when I am strung out on one hour of sleep and a night of acid. This tired, hung over moment is absolutely beautiful and perfect and I am 17, and ready for anything."