March
12, 2002
George K. George
He had pancakes on the brain. And on hers,
the same with blueberries. Surfacing bruises made walking less of a chore, and
white noises in the city park quieted inner ear buzzings. In the distraction of
helping one another live again the previous night of left-stage position at a
governing policy awareness concert of unruly decibels, the travelers' clothing
brushed when they staggered over an unnoticed change in the sidewalk. His
yellowing row of starched red-orange spikes pulled at his scalp in the stiff
breezes. A blonde shade of bubblegum crowned her, which carried into her face
and lips. It was sometime on a Saturday. A helicopter thumped overhead.
She made a face over her shoulder at a
passing hand-locked couple and muttered a sarcastic editorial on such things on
Saturdays in the park. The word, "bloody," came from her. Than on any
other day in this section of urban America, more people had overheard its
utterance, and many fewer took even vague offense.
"Right on, Alex," he said to her,
and demonstrated by jumping a puddle with slim deft. From ahead, a single
figure faded in and out of the rays of sun escaping the canopy. Half as close,
a man sat blowing puffs of smoke that ribboned and dissolved between pulls of a
bottle. Coming into a closer ray, sunlight ricocheted from something on the
approaching figure. The seated smoker turned his gray face toward the two
travelers, where it locked in an expressionless gaze. Neither of the two took
any notice. Nor did the man smoking on the bench, who was balancing a clear
bottle of transparent green fluid on his faded knee, seem to take any notice of
the figure, whom Alex recognized as a city police officer on park patrol. She
began chanting, just above her breath, the chorus to an anthem from the night
before that was again blaring in her head.
They met in an almost perfect line, with the
patrol officer whistling something random between the kids making their way to
stacks of syrup-drenched replenishment, and the man on the bench, whose gaze
was interrupted with a start by a flash of green khaki that came from nowhere.
He, as casually as possible, clinked his glass bottle behind a flap of flannel
shirts, crossed his arms around it, and waited for all of them to pass.
They, but one, had only intentions of
scattering the chance cluster into three separate Saturdays thereafter.
"Hey, Rod," the park patrol pivoted
on his heel two paces out of the linear meeting. Rodney reacted to his name and
turned around. He thought he might have recognized the patrol, though had hoped
he was just overtired. As the patrol began reminding them and himself of his
senior year Chemistry class half filled with freshmen like Rodney, Rodney read
the name on his badge, "Namous." For any given time at his high
school, he recalled more than one peer with this last name, and having to
distinguish between their like, but striking, features wasn't anything that ever
presented itself.
Alex put her hands in her pocket and swayed
her vision over the man on the bench, tightening his chokehold on the hidden
bottle.
"I took the two year training course,
and they're starting me out on park patrol. A few months, and I'll be hitting the
streets. I hardly believe some of the shit I've seen already," said the
patrol and continued to flick his eyes randomly over Rodney, who made a noise
of false interest and started a parting response.
"—Like this guy," the patrol looked
down at the man, who continued his prolonged glance in the other direction. The
man had not been watching the lips of Rodney or the patrol. He only cared that
they eventually leave.
"Hey you," and Rodney backed up,
"I've seen wha'chu got," but the man showed no reaction. The black
arches of sharp pedals around Alex's eyes grew apart the same time the song in
her head reached its resolution.
The patrol stood knee to knee with the man,
who looked up and around and back. The man mouthed the word, "me?"
and his eyes flicked to Alex where a corner of his mouth curled upward almost
undetectably. Alex, as Rodney, stood as an unwilling spectator. Neither was
excused to leave.
"What's the matter? Cat got your
tongue?" the man tried to read the patrol's lips, but gained no sense from
them after the first question. The patrol stuck out his tongue, gripped it
between his fingers, and tried to say, "What do you think you're hiding...
here?" He reached into the man's shirt, groped around, and came out
revealing the bottle of green fluid.
"What's this?" he let go of his
tongue and held the bottle above his shoulder with an outstretched arm,
"Just what found its way into the park today?" He grasped his tongue
outside his teeth, and triumphantly slurred every syllable, "Why, it looks
like... ah, Green Apple Pucker!"
Alex laughed through her nose at the patrol
looking down at his head-to-toe forest green uniform. Alex's display, and maybe
the three-quarters of fluid that was not in the bottle, loosened the man's
anxiety with having been discovered. His eyes brightened at Alex and he laughed
loudly with her, and as inaudible to himself as the entire conversation
preceding this.
The patrol, putting to practice hours of
off-duty rehearsal, twirled his nightstick from its holster and took all of the
wind out of the man's laughter. Gasping and coughing, he recoiled on the bench.
Alex crouched back for barely a second before pouncing with a full intent to
put a boot down the patrol's throat, but was caught and held by Rodney, who
heard slamming car doors and crackling radios on the winding park street behind
the scene.
They stayed to watch the park patrol being
pulled off the man, and from his proving ground, and ducked fuming into the
back of a squad car. They stood by for the long process of point-and-read over
an open-container citation with the man and a patient, weathered police
officer. Before the man turned away, their waves and smiles were reflected with
a knowing eye and sideways grin. Nine blocks of hand-in-hand later, Rodney
thought of saying something as he was finishing his first cup of black coffee
and Alex was pouring the last available sugar packet into hers, but he held his
tongue.
ã Copyright 2002
george k george