"DECEMBER BOYS" PART FIVE: A PILGRIMAGE ON A TIMELESS NIGHT (2nd section)

DECEMBER BOYS

"A PILGRIMAGE ON A TIMELESS NIGHT" 

(2nd section)

     On this springtime night, there was no more inviting place to be than Memorial Union. As far as Rhett was concerned, Troy Blake’s party was sloppy seconds compared to the energy and good feelings surrounding Der Rathskeller and the outdoor Terrace tonight. Josie was missing out and depriving Mariah of her first taste this jubilant time. Rhett and Craig sat outside on this evening for an hour or so, listening to the melodic power-pop songs of some band. To Craig, as he sat alternately indulging his inner guitar spirit through finger gestures and tapping his thighs, the music was the perfect soundtrack for a spring night—it completely represented the emotions he had at this time of year. For Rhett, it was more profound. Rhett found himself happily lost in an epiphany. He gazed warmly at the sights of his fellow student body who filled every square inch of the Terrace including the Crayola colored metal chairs that were often claimed as the bounty of late night drunken thefts. Everyone was burning off some much needed pre-Finals Week tension and as Rhett took in this moment, he couldn’t help but to think the students who had been in this very physical and mental spot before him and how many will take his place after him. It was a magical thought filling what he believed to be a magical time and place, not exclusively for himself, but for every person who had ever set foot in the Union during their time in Madison. With that, he laughed as he couldn’t believe that just one year ago, he had graduated from high school. That time was worlds away from this moment. Each year of high school concluded with an event, be it an end-of-the-year dance, a class trip to an amusement park or the prom. It was something that was presented to the students as something to wrap up the turbulence of the completed year in a pretty pink bow (or was is a tourniquet?). Rhett always felt it trivial and false to assume that these experiences felt the same to everyone and the ramifications of not being a part of those events would be filled with life-long regrets. For some, the end of a year in college was anti-climactic. There was no end-of-the-year dance. No set event to tie it all together and apply a false sense of meaning. There was no sameness to any of it. What made Rhett appreciate this moment on the Terrace, peppered with uncertain futures looming closely, was that it felt like a celebratory moment of the unknown. And all of these people chose to be here on this night. It could be argued that high schoolers also chose to be a part of their respective end-of-the-year events but when presented with one opportunity crossed with the societal pressures of not following along, what would you choose? The end of a year in college felt more like life itself, flowing onwards from one situation to the next. This felt more truthful to Rhett. Everyone was deeply intertwined in this moment together. This night felt like the perfect moment of communal spirit and freedom to Rhett, with unknown joys and tragedies awaiting all, and everyone embraced it.

     While Rhett reveled in this moment, the stars began to appear in the night sky over the students and the boats on Lake Mendota and suddenly, a new song began with words that spoke to Rhett’s heart.

                      “We are yesterday

                        We are today

                        We are tomorrow

                        We are timeless

                        We are then

                        We are now

                        We are the future

                        We are timeless

                        We the sorrow

                        We are the pain

                        We are the sunshine

                        We are rain

                        We are love

                        We are hate       

                        We are the future

                        We are timeless…”

     “Woo! Points for obscurity!” exclaimed Craig. “This is a Badfinger song.”

     Rhett nodded and gave Craig a goofy grin that he couldn’t place. This wasn’t just a song originated by some early ‘70’s English band. This was a perfect song for a perfect moment and it belonged to all and it was encapsulated in the shared desires and anxieties of every student, past, present and future.

     A while later, after playing a few futile rounds of “Spy Hunter” in the arcade, Craig sat on a nearby bench and read the Isthmus, grumbling at the self-important so-called reviews of its’ film critic, while Rhett bought a soda. If Craig didn’t already know that Rhett didn’t partake in drugs, he would’ve assumed that Rhett was high. Rhett returned to the benches, drank and grinned to himself. Craig grinned back and resumed his reading as they silently pondered their next move for the night. As Craig finished with the Isthmus and decided to grab the latest Daily Cardinal to see the current installment of the student comic strip, “Badgers and other Animals,” he emitted a subtle double-take at the sight before him.  

     Suddenly sitting next to Rhett was a street prophet of an undeterminable age. And it just about made Craig burst out into laughter to see this member from the seedier corners of Madison, of which characters like the impossibly tiny, hunched over and slow walking bag lady and the infamous Scanner Dan inhabited, cheerfully nodding his head and grinning (the best way anyone can grin with few teeth) at Rhett, who was nodding his head and grinning in response. Craig humorously imagined a new postcard for the Wisconsin Office of Tourism. A framed shot to capture this priceless image. There was, on screen left, Rhett Brazelton, the eager 18 year old college freshman of average height and build, with fair (some would say Aryan due to his German heritage) and slightly feminine features, kissible lips, and shaggy blond hair currently slicked backwards from being tossed by springtime wind. On screen right, the street prophet of undeterminable age. A black man in the truest sense of color. Craig felt that this was the darkest man he had ever seen and he had the roughness of worn leather, as if the skin on his face had been dragged down an endless dirt road in the mythical Mississippi Delta. He wore a beat up leather jacket with ripped army fatigues and on his feet, appeared to be house shoes with the big toes peeking through. Finally, to make the postcard image complete, Craig mentally added the words “Welcome To Madison” and arched them over the two grinning faces. To stop himself from laughing in the presence of this man, he non-chalantly picked up The Daily Cardinal and began to “read.” Too add to the humor of this scene, the street prophet began to speak to Rhett. His voice contained the deep phlegm drenched growl of the down and out. It almost sounded as if his tongue was too large for his mouth.

     “Say man,” the street prophet began. “I’ve had this really bad cold. Been sneezin’ so much I’m ‘bout to blow muh own head off muh shoulders. Sneezin’!” And then for emphasis, he proclaimed, “’Choo! ‘Choo! ‘Choo!!” while rotating his head from left to right for each “’Choo!”. 

     “Well, I’ve kinda had a bit of a cold myself lately,” Rhett politely offered.

     “I can give yuh a little summin’ for that,” said the street prophet as if he had been waiting eternally to unload implied pharmaceuticals on unsuspecting college students. There was nothing sinister in is delivery. He was surprisingly good natured, as if he and Rhett Brazelton had been life long friends and his offer was comparable to say, the offering of a throat lozenge or Kleenex.

     “Uh…no thank you,” answered Rhett. “I’ll be fine.”

     Craig could barely contain himself. Desperately he tried to not be noticed laughing behind his newspaper for fear of offending the generous, narcotic dealing vagrant. 

     “Well, how about ‘cho buddy over there? The one gigglin’ behind that newspaper!”

     Craig gulped and gasped. Did this character also possess X-ray vision or was he a particularly astute judge of character? Craig chose the latter. When one is so visibly ignored, it must be easy to become highly aware of human foibles, Craig pondered. He grinned and almost hearing the cartoon stroke of a violin as he peeked around his newspaper to face the street prophet, Craig choked out a feeble, “Um…no thank you. I’m fine,” to which the prophet responded with a disgustedly knowing, “Uh…huh!” And with a quick lock of their eyes, Craig and the street prophet engaged in a silent acknowledgement that they would each continue their façade; Craig’s ignorance of the exchange through the “reading” of his newspaper and the prophet’s ignorance of being simultaneously watched and unnoticed by Craig.

     Turning back to Rhett with a more conspiratorial gaze over both of his shoulders, the street prophet asked, “Say bruh, do you cook?”

     Rhett, still in his utopian reverie, had to admit to himself that he was unsure of how to answer this question. Did he literally mean cook, as in the culinary act of preparing a meal for oneself or others? Or was this some previously unknown euphemism for an illicit act…oh, say…freebasing? After a momentary pause, Rhett decided that he would try out the former. “Uh no…I pretty much just eat the dorm food.”

     “Well, I was doin’ a little cookin’ muhself. A little bitta summin’ summin’, you know…I like to cook. I like to eat too. My palate is kinda delicate and nuthin’ goes down better than the stuff I prepares for muhself. Anything else usually just runs right through me!” And then for emphasis, the street prophet added an exclamatory, “Oh!” as he tossed his head to and fro visually depicting his occasional indigestion. Then, he continued. “So you see, son. I was doin’a little cookin’ and I realized that I was missing a key ingredient. I needed a taste of summin’ special. Unique to the meal. What I needed…(he looked over his shoulder as if to guard the contents of his secret recipe)…was…(he looked again)…some…okra!”

     “I see.”

     “A brotha can’t have a meal without okra, son!” said the prophet, as if proclaiming and eternal truth unknown to Rhett, with glazed over eyes combined with the cavernous wrinkles in his furrowed brow. “So, can you help a brotha out? Help a man get his okra for his meal?”

     Sometimes the best laughter is one that is unexposed. A clandestine laughter that remains hidden due to the inappropriateness of the time, situation or place; for example,  a funny moment during a church service or class lecture, where the containment of such laughter only becomes more difficult which then makes the humor at the time much funnier. It is a situation that ultimately feeds itself. Craig was experiencing this peculiar sensation at this very moment, listening to the street prophet hustle Rhett while not wanting to disturb the silent truce between the prophet and himself. Each time he tried to ignore the situation, it became funnier and much more difficult to control and extinguish. Craig recalled a time during a middle school Social Studies class in which two friends had shared a private joke between themselves which left the receiver of the joke in a fit a barely contained laughter, which was obvious by his flushed face, painfully trying to hold the laughter inside combined with his silent physical vibrations which were rapidly becoming spasms. When their teacher could not take it anymore and finally asked if there was a problem, the student who shared the joke plainly explained, “Oh there’s no problem, Mrs. Shankman. He’s just masturbating.”  The orgasmic eruption of classroom laughter that followed this remark was not only a release, it was further punctuated by the joke recipient’s fall from his chair to the floor and finally the two student’s subsequent exile towards the Principal’s Office by a forcefully curt, “Out!” by the otherwise pleasant Mrs. Shankman. Craig felt a similar eruption waiting to take place at the moment he saw Rhett give the street prophet three dollars for the presumed missing dinner ingredient of okra.

     “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ ‘bout!” the prophet graciously replied once he was handed the currency.

     Rhett continued to sit with a bemused grin plastered onto his face and he proceeded to elicit a simple, “My pleasure.”

     The street prophet immediately grabbed Rhett’s hand and began to vigorously shake it in gratitude while also uttering a series of hurried and surprisingly breathless remarks of “Thank you.” Admittedly, Rhett was curiously fascinated and unfazed by the coarseness of the prophet’s skin, which he imagined sun-baked parchment from the Middle Ages to feel like, and it was this piece of sensory information that only added to the solidarity and connection of the moment. After the handshake, the street prophet swiftly rose to his feet and granted Craig one more X-Ray vision stare through The Daily Cardinal and as mysteriously as he appeared, he vanished. Finally, Craig was able to release the humorous pressure that had built inside of him through a shriek of laughter which produced severely watered eyes that drenched his glasses and cheeks and also ached his sides. Rhett on the other hand was still in a serene state, honestly wondering just what Craig was falling all over himself about.

     “What’s so funny?” asked Rhett, honestly.

     “Are you kidding?!” Craig somehow managed to croak out between squawks of laughter.

     “No,” Rhett said, with a tinge of confused hurt in his voice that made Craig, who was highly in tune to these things, pause, “I’m not kidding.”

     “Well…Rhett, it was just so…” began Craig choosing his words carefully. “…you know, ridiculous! I mean—with all of the people that ask for spare change and stuff, this guy is making some sort of plea for okra?! It’s just absurd! Look, I just didn’t realize that okra had an alcohol content.”

     “Craig, why does everything have to have an ulterior motive?” Rhett countered. “It could’ve been legit. Where’s the harm? What’s he hurting?”

     “His liver. His pancreas, perhaps.”

     “Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe his intentions were pure and if they weren’t, so what? He’s happy. I certainly don’t feel as if I’ve been had. We just connected for a minute. That’s all. And…what’s wrong with that?” concluded Rhett.

     Craig stopped laughing to take in the words of his friend. Perhaps he had something there. Rhett was no fool and he jumped into the depths of innocence during his exchange with the street prophet and came out better for it. And there was nothing wrong with that.

     State Street was boldly alive on this glorious late-Springtime night. It was as if the residents of Madison jointly decided to rub its’ collective shoulders with their collegiate brethren. Young adult couples in love and families with small children skittered past the scowling teenage refuges of Peace Park towards the haven of the Chocolate Shoppe. The Girls Of New York, who inhabited the student housing of The Towers, made their grand entrance onto State Street for their nightly command performance to a completely unimpressed Madison audience. This small militia with identical appearances of thick black hair and heavily made-up faces and uniforms of black tops, tight denim jeans and black high heeled boots, slowly clompity-clomped with purpose to the more expensive clothing stores. Afterwards, they would have a self-consciously calorie counted evening meal complete with diet sodas and finally head out for a night of bar-hopping. The sounds of State Street collided into a pleasant cacophony; a saxophone squonk on one block, a passionate acoustic guitar driven howl on the next. Even local street musician Art Paul Schlosser gained a small and appreciative audience in an alcove near the Red Shed. Craig and Rhett wandered and weaved the street for hours, in and out of the used record stores and thrift shops with throwback names like Sugar Shack, The Pipefitter and Marmalade Skies.

     Before either of them knew it, they had walked past the busy Johnson street intersection, the Civic Center, and the Orpheum (which was shockingly presenting “Police Academy 6” to Craig’s horror), the pornography emporium of the State Street Arcade and completely around the centerpiece of the city, the state capitol building. So involved they were in mobile conversation, they only realized how far they had walked because the surrounding city noises had been left behind on State Street. The sounds of the night were almost tranquil by the Dane County Courthouse and police station. For a while, Rhett and Craig stood silently, letting the waves of Lake Monona provide the only commentary. Walking further still and closer to the lake, there was a small park of sorts with a bench and the two friends sat down to rest their feet. It was then that Rhett finally broke their silence.

     “Where did Otis Redding’s plane go down?”

     “You know,” Craig began thoughtfully. “Otis died on December 10^th, 1967 and…I think it was here. I mean—maybe not right at this very spot but his plane went down in Lake Monona and this is Lake Monona!” he concluded, spreading his arms widely for the presentation of Mr. Redding’s watery grave.

     “Damn Craig! You just know it all don’t you?” said Rhett, very impressed with Craig’s endless musical knowledge.

     “According to my parents, it’s all useless,” responded Craig slowly, as if hearing his parents’ voices in his head at that very second.

     Sensing this sliver of bitterness elbowing itself into their evening, Rhett quickly steered the conversation back to Otis Redding. 

     “Did they get the body out of there?”

     “I have no idea but I would think so. I would hope so,” Craig exhaled. “Really, how morbid would that be? He’s not sitting at the dock of the bay anymore. He’s sitting at the bottom of the lake!” he concluded sardonically.   

      Their last two exchanges, it seemed to Rhett, steered towards gloomier subject matter than he would’ve preferred. Where Craig was highly intuitive and introverted, Rhett was decidedly more philosophical and this evening had placed him into a highly meditative plane where life’s connections were blazingly obvious. Wanting to interject a different and more positive spin onto the death of Otis Redding, Rhett offered the following concept.

     “Maybe we’re meant to be here.”

     “Hmmm?”

     “Maybe we’re meant to be here tonight,” Rhett offered again. “We didn’t plan on being here or even coming here. We just ended up here and look at what we immediately started talking about.”

     “What’s with you tonight?” Craig asked, with eyebrows joining together in a quizzical expression. “You’re so…metaphysical.”

     “No,” denied Rhett with a faint twinge of hurt.

     Instantly picking up on the change in Rhett’s voice, Craig honesty interjected, “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

     “It’s Ok,” answered Rhett, immediately feeling better. “All I was going to say was that since we are here for inexplicable reasons it is because of those reasons that we should honor this moment and this man’s memory.”

     “How so? Like with a prayer or something?”

     “Something like that.”

     “Hey!” Craig began, picking up on the moment Rhett initiated. “A few years ago, I was at a funeral and this one person—some aunt I don’t know—came up and began this thing called a libation. She said that what you basically do is invoke the name of a person who has passed away that is important to you and that signifies that their spirit is still with us.”

     “That’s perfect!!” shouted Rhett, appreciating that Craig was finally getting into the spirit of this night.  "Look, I believe that we should get down on our knees for this to show the proper reverence."

     "This is Otis we're talking about."

     As they lowered themselves onto the moist grass, Rhett and Craig individually clasped their fingers together and bowed their heads solemnly. After a dramatic pause of sorts, Rhett began to speak.

     "Otis, we kneel at the site of your tragic passing to let you know that you will never be forgotten. And in your name, we pray to you and ask you for guidance in our young lives. We ask that you make us as funky as you were and please help us get all of the women that we know you had back then."

     "Praise Otis!!" interjected Craig as an additional exclamation point to the libation.

     The boys remained silent for a few moments lost in whatever thoughts they had, quietly daring the other to begin laughing first at the silliness of it all. Strangely, a strong chill emitted from Lake Monona during their stifled laughter, dropping the temperature several degrees. While this temporal occurrence is not unusual in the later hours of an early Spring night, it struck Rhett and Craig as slightly paranormal due to nature of their visit. Feeling as if the spirit of Otis Redding himself had been disrespected and was about to take vengeance, Rhett suddenly began to utter the famous whistle that concluded "Sittin' On the Dock Of The Bay.” Not wanting to leave his friend symbolically alone in the wind, Craig joined in and once they ceased, the chill in the air subsided. Rhett and Craig raised their heads and faced each other slowly, almost afraid that the other would sprout limbs from their chins and nostrils. As they opened their eyes, they immediately burst into a series of guffaws and hoots.

     "Oh God, that was some wrong shit there!" choked Craig.

     "You're not kidding," began Rhett. "I think we've tested the fates enough for one night."

     Their laughter continued until they both rotated towards the path that led them to this spot to see the landing lights of State Street beckoning to them, reminding them of their late night reunion with Josie Fagen and Mariah Esposito. And what a long walk back it was.

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