Henry Hazard coasting these mean--- but presently empty--- commuter streets. List of errands to run. "Don't forget to stop at the Junior High School." Like that could possibly skip my mind. Don't forget you need to identify that body at the morgue either. They think it might be you.
If I were a parent this might be fun, I could go in there with some guff.
These oak trees and telephone poles won't give way, you know. They can stop you at 60 mph. 60 to zero and you're dead. So
watch the road even if you are on an inevitable rail. My life of taut springs about to go
BOING! And not two months ago, my teeth unclenched, I'd found my way in life in climate controlled isolation, living history via old time radio, 100 episodes of Information, Please, the most calming, civilized program you ever soaked in. And I lived in the vaults and deepest mazes of YouTube, catching up on all the TV I missed when I was in gestation. And movies before my parents were born too. The life. That was the life then, this is the life now. I'm not complaining except for a moment here.
Pale mid-afternoon of early March, when the evil looking yellow and black school buses roll and cross your X at confusing intersections. Can't shake this feeling I'm truant, never could this time of day, or this time of year.
___
There's a good pot-hole on Ash, which jars my car just right to turn the faulty heater back on. Pneumonia weather here. Maybe that's what my young charge has, why he's missed school. Worry, fret. If I should turn back. Winter started early and is ending late, no end in sight at all.
Doesn't the earth have to come to a full stop, to reverse itself and turn the northern hemisphere back towards the sun? I would think so. But why don't we all fall down then?
______
Hazard rolling past the strip malls, lousy with minimum wage jobs. Even a temp agency store- front there, God. Help me a little more. And people tell me I'm a worry wart. My psychiatrist puts me on hold, saying she's transfering me to Jesus.
Sure I'm living the good life now but everything's hanging by a thread. Clocks going
triki tiki. There's a small mammal gnawing on my safety rope,
triki tiki tavi with razor sharp teeth, by gym.
And my brain's
pre-historic man is pushing the panic button continuously, like it's a door-bell and the modern man in me would open the door to him. For his safety, like the rest of my interior is a Blue Star Home..
Good Night Nurse... who tells me I have to be at the Junior High school pronto please to pick up the scion's homework, thank you.
West now. But walking into a junior high school, what if the
emo-memories flood tide. I'll be risking catatonia And then it's not the third floor for me it's the sixth or seventh floor where they tie you down after a walloping dose of
Haldol.
They made a mistake, when I was 20, moving a dead woman's get-well flowers and balloons all around my bedside while I was comatose. They said there was no where else to put them. I woke up in this strange room which was like a white cloud and thought, holy mackerel, they've wheeled my bed into the Goodbye Forever room.
Hazard nearly misses the pot hole, and veers just in time to hit it just right.
Ka-BUMP, front wheel, back wheel,
Ka-BUMP, and the heater turns on. No other pot hole in town does that. It's a tricky short in the wires.
___
The young scholar told me don't worry, all the kids were gone by now. So, no hooting 'neds, no shin-kickers then.
Park here in at the recreation center next door, as close to the bus concourse and the side door as I can get.
Hazard makes a wiper blade of his thumb and index finger and
squee-
geez the sweat from his brow up into his hair.
"Go to the office, it's right in the front door and ..." said the Good Night Nurse. But I stopped her and said no. No, I want to experience this, I want to test my
discombob.
Brave man, she sighed. You are so brave, Hazard.
"I'm Psychedelic. All Psychedelics are brave, we've seen it all. Just have to find my keys."
Looking from his car window at the brown mossy moat to the gate of this gated school. Wide open. Then lighting a cigarette.
I must have just had one, this tastes like I just had one. Put it out. And the chill winter wind will push the tobacco cloud away from me by the time I reach that door.
She said the front door but this side door will open to the same hallways.
___
Ah.
Oh.
Hazard steps upon a thin white gym mat in the gym. So, this is the gym, then. Look up. And it's in session, I see. It's a small gym. Crowded.
20 boys and girls in their appropriate gym clothes, turn to see. The instructor, around the corner on a beam, stops silent.
I see another set of double doors on the other side, inviting me. I smile. I wink. I nod hello as I pass though the
hobbledehoy, pardon me, excuse me, pardon me. Noticing half way that they are all in their stocking feet. I could look back and see if I'm tracking in mud and then turn around just before the half way point and step in my own prints and not make this worse. But, nah. That would take time and effort and might even strike them as comical.
And these double doors I approach now, will they be locked for any reason? This is the age of penitentiary architecture. I may have to make this trip back in defeat after all.
Reach out, fully expecting the door not to yield.
It opens! Good-bye, kids. Remember you're my future.
___
This is a wide hallway, with benches along the wall between the trophy cases. I see a little bookworm here, engrossed in her Social Studies text book. Stop.
"Excuse me, could you tell me where the office is?"
Silence. She doesn't even look up.
Missy?
It's happening again. I can't believe it. These girls won't even give you the time of day, nothing has changed at all in 30 years.
Then Hazard notes the perfectly fitting black discs in her ears, with wires to an mp3 player. Oh. She's already multi-tasking and she's deaf. That's different.
Continue down the long, soul-sucking hallway with its outrageous gravity. Looking for signs, "Office >>>>" like the kids don't know where the office is. But of course I can't get lost. That's something I said to the Good Night Nurse on the phone, just before leaving. It's good to keep in mind that we have our feet on the ground and our legs move. Good to keep in mind that we are always in some sense "home". Planet Earth with it's fourty explosions every half-second somewhere,
haha.
I come upon a ticket window where a woman sits, but there is a sign, "Visitors Enter Office Door>>>>>". It's a discombob! I can handle it.
Three grown-ups there, younger than Hazard, laughing it up about last night's bar-hopping. Hey, I'm standing here already. I got my dumb-lost look, I came in this visitors door. I want to be called "sir".
"May I help you, sir?" the receptionist asks past the two excited school teachers, who turn to behold and fall silent.
"I'm Henry Fraught, here to pick up home-work for
Nickatechna Psekovich Kominski."
I'm handed a thick folder. What is this, a year's worth? Has my charge been over-charged? But I've started arguments in places like this before, and lost half the time.
We had a teacher who spent math class time telling us about his World War ll experiences, and spent history class making us read from a dull text book. When I told him I heard he was in World War ll he flipped out and marched me to the office, accusing me of trying to divert his and the classes attention from our History studies.Then get out. At the door a teacher was just coming in and I stepped back. He stepped back too and rather peevishly urged me to come through. Me first, right.
Hazard back home inside his car, lighting another cigarette. Glad I went through with this, the boy seemed slightly doubtful. But I am Henry Hazard The Psychedelic who's seen it all and never flinched until his early 30's.
