The introduction of a volatile parent into a highly charged, hormonal situation was a catalyst that caused several reactions at once. Annie screamed, then clamped her hand over her mouth to avoid startling her dad, who was already increasing his pace with growing alarm. Mike was saying “shit” over and over again, trying to zip up his pants and fumble for the ignition. Marty helpfully provided range updates on the approaching menace. “50 feet… 40 feet… 30 feet…” Mike dropped the Stanger into gear the instant the engine fired up, and they peeled out of there like Dirty Harry, sending Marty hurtling backwards into the rear seat. Out the rear window, he caught a glimpse of Annie’s infuriated father, shaking his fist in rage as the red Mustang zipped around a corner.
“Omigod, he’s gonna ground me forever,” Annie moaned inconsolably.
“Fuck!” Mike yelled intensely. It was the only word he could say for at least five minutes. Marty’s teacher, Mrs. Hightower, liked to proclaim that profanity was for dullards who were too lazy to think of proper English words, but it was amazing how much more could be expressed in one cuss word than in the finest sentence.
Baseball tryouts were held right next to the bleachers where the low-income students hung out all day at school, so they were a little too familiar with its friendly confines. The older jocks who would be the starting players strutted around like they owned the place, but they knew they were trespassing on “bleacher creature” turf. They glanced around curiously, the way tourists might behave in the Haight-Ashbury district of the city, hoping to see some hippies smoking a joint or burning their draft cards. The master of ceremonies, Coach Krueger, was a stereotypical drill instructor type, with an angular jaw, buzz cut, and an overinflated bodybuilder physique, which he amplified by wearing a uniform top that was two sizes too small.
“All right ladies, who wants to play some softball?” He sneered with harsh, exaggerated sarcasm. Mike and Marty looked to the older players for guidance, and they stared down their noses at the rookies, as if they were the “ladies” to whom the great and powerful Coach was referring. The Fabulous Furry Freak brothers said nothing, which was probably best.
“Starting team, take the field! Rooks, let’s see what you got. You get 10 pitches!” He pointed aggressively at the batter’s box, while admiring his biceps. Barney, the all-league pitcher, was warming up on the mound. They’d have to test their skill against the best. Marty and Barney had a tacit understanding, being former teammates on the freshman football and baseball teams. Barney always reminded Marty about that first kegger party with a kind of awe, as if they had shared a rite of passage together. He grooved Marty 10 strikes, and all 10 were put in play. Six were line drives. Marty took his batting helmet off triumphantly, and when Coach saw his long hair for the first time he whistled, “C’mon, sweetheart! Don’t stand there admiring your figure!” Marty gave the bat to the next guy, and grabbed his glove to shag flies in the outfield. He made a point of sprinting at full speed out to his position.
Coach Krueger was watching him, red-faced and incredulous. Damned if that long-haired, skinny spider in center field didn’t catch all the flies that came his way, and boy, could he run! Marty was happy to see Mike got a couple of hits in his turn, too. Rob and Dave were also trying out for the team, but they didn’t look so good because Barney was really messing with them. Rob finally hurled the bat away in disgust, and stalked off the field when he failed to put a single ball in play. The sneering Coach watched him scornfully, as a tyrant mocks the shame of failure. “You!” He pointed at Marty. “Get a haircut!” That was his way of informing him he was invited back for the second tryout, and still had a chance to earn a spot on the team! Afterwards, Mike, Annie, and Marty hung out with their friends for a while because they were reluctant to face the wrath of her father. Dave produced a doobie from his abalone-inlaid silver stash box, and they all loitered on Fern Lane, off campus, flagrantly breaking about a dozen laws.
Marty took a big hit from the joint and held it till he was getting dizzy, then turned around and blew out all the smoke – right into Coach Krueger’s face! Oh no!! They all thought he’d left a long time before, but there he was, riding his bike past them at a high speed, right through a huge cloud of marijuana smoke (courtesy of his erstwhile center fielder). Thankfully, he didn’t stop, but Marty knew from his look that he knew who they were, and they would pay for it. Needless to say, Marty didn’t make the team. Instead, he got called into the vice-principal’s office the next day, on a trumped-up pretense.
Mr. McIntosh was a very decent but nonplussed man, with an eternally puzzled expression on his face. He sincerely failed to understand why any student would not want to behave like a model American citizen, and it permanently furrowed his brow. He wore a tweed suit with a thin black tie, wished that Dick Nixon was still President, and kept his hair short in a conservative 50’s style. He squinted at Marty for a long time, fussing with the papers on his desk. His eyes were too close together, and his ears too far apart, which made the concerned expression on his face seem oddly askance. “Is everything all right at home?” He posed his question with disinterest, as if it wasn’t really the one he wanted to ask.
“Yes, of course.” Marty rebutted, “Why am I here?”
Mr. McIntosh snapped back into bureaucrat mode, and pronounced, “You know perfectly well why you’re here. Maybe I should contact your mother!” Marty noted with respect that he didn’t say ‘father’ or ‘parents.’ This guy has done his homework, he reasoned, and decided the best course of action was to pretend like he didn’t want him to call Marge, which of course he would do, and then she wouldn’t do anything, and this would all be over.
“No, please don’t – I mean, I didn’t do anything on campus, and it was after school hours!”
The stern administrator smiled at Marty as if he could read his mind. Mr. McIntosh had dealt with a lot of teenage boys in his career. “So you really do want me to call her… I see. Well, I won’t. Mr. Ball and I will just keep an eye on you.” His face twinkled with mirth, but it was not a kind look. “You may go.” He turned back to his papers, as if searching for the one that would convict the low-life hippie kid defiling his office.
That brief but intense brush with “The Establishment” only made Marty more determined to live a free-spirited life at school. He attended classes, but did what he wanted to do. If the subject matter was interesting, he took excellent notes and sometimes finished his homework before the bell. If not, he entertained himself by drawing cartoons or reading MAD magazine surreptitiously behind his textbook.
Back in the Lagunitas Triangle, Paula started dealing pot from “the shack” – as he referred to the tiny toy cabin he rented from the McAuliffes across the creek. This was no small decision, because pot dealers were getting up to 25 years in prison back in those days. Being young, foolish, and invincible, Marty decided to start a resale business to save up enough money for another car. He rolled an entire lid into joints, and made four times what he paid for it! Marty became the guy on campus that your parents warned you about when you were in high school. His advertising strategy was simple and direct: just light up a joint in a crowd, and let everybody ask for more. Of course, he often wound up getting pretty high, too. Classes became less interesting, and his grades dipped some, but he was making more money than he’d ever had in his life!
The occupational hazards of being a small-time pot dealer were many. First was the tendency to smoke up your profits. There were plenty of kids known as “boasters” who sold a few joints so they could smoke the rest of the lid for free, and just kept on doing that. They languished in a haze of disinterest about school in general, and only showed up so they could sell a few doobies. The second hazard was moochers. A serious businessman had to enforce a strict “no credit” policy, and suffer the loss of popularity that ensued. Worst of all were the “narcs,” meaning school officials and teachers, and the most dangerous of these was Mr. Ball. Students who got busted by Mr. Ball were ignominiously shunned for being stupid enough to get caught by the most obvious undercover narc in history.
Nobody knew Mr. Ball’s official title – he seemed to have some vague administrative role – but his job was to be constantly outside, patrolling the campus. His covert mission was to eradicate all drug use on campus, which was like trying to stop a flood with a bucket. He harbored a delusion that he was a deep, clandestine operative, but naturally every student knew who he was from miles away. The students had an unofficial but obvious warning system, and they could tell where Mr. Ball was at any given time, by the high-pitched calls of “Bald!” that preceded him everywhere he went. Aside from the terrible comb-over and creepy mustache mentioned before, he sported a very long nose with the air of a vexed French gendarme who’d lost his hat. He always wore a blue down jacket, and snooped around campus on quick little pipe cleaner legs, with a forward lean that made his ambitious nose appear around a corner before he did.
Mike, Boobers, and Marty became like The Three Musketeers, and made Mr. Ball their Cardinal Richelieu. They dashingly flaunted their freedom in the face of tyranny, and out-dueled the oppressive system every day. Mr. Ball knew that they smoked pot during school hours, but couldn’t catch them, and he grew increasingly bold and frustrated. One day, he confronted them about “smelling like marijuana,” and ordered them to show what was in their pockets. It was a ridiculous demand, because he hadn’t caught them actually breaking the law, and they just said some other guys were smoking near them. He had to let them go, but warned “I’ll be keeping an eye on you three. You’re in my book!”
“I didn’t know you were writing a book,” Marty deadpanned, “Is it about ‘high’ school?”
Mr. Ball’s earthworm lips pursed, and he raised his index finger as if he was going to say something, but then stuffed his hand in his jacket pocket and did an about-face, and rapidly strode away like an angry wind-up toy. “Bald!” Boobers yelled as he rounded the corner.
These little victories led the Three Musketeers to more audacious acts of rebellion, such as smoking a special spleef on campus for lunch one day. Boobers called it his ‘burrito’ because it had some meaty chunks of hash in it. Obviously, they weren’t planning on functioning the rest of the day; much less attending classes. The trio was situated in one of their most strategic hangouts: a grove of small trees up on the embankment above the football field, from which they could see anyone approaching. Their backs were to the chain link fence that bordered the school, with a homeowner’s backyard behind that. Suddenly, Mr. Ball appeared at the entrance to the campus about 50 yards away, already moving rapidly and coming directly towards them, as though he knew they were there.
“Shit!” said Boobers, and stuffed the burrito in his pocket. The desperados moved along the fence quickly, away from the approaching narc, who was going faster now that he saw them moving. He broke into a run. Quickly, like three monkeys instead of musketeers, they clambered over the fence into the backyard of a kid they knew, and ran through the side yards and gates of the neighborhood in a zig-zag pattern that was intended to lose their pursuer. Mr. Ball stuck with them as best he could, and they heard him yelling “Stop!” from behind, and swearing. Why did narcs always yell ‘stop’ – Marty pondered as he ran for his life – as if that would somehow cause their quarry to halt and sheepishly yield to authority?
Moving swiftly, with the direct alacrity of soldiers, Mike led them to the apartment building where he used to live with Pop & Babs. They trusted that he knew some hiding place, and he didn’t let them down. Some bushes concealed a space under the outside stairs, and the three fugitives slipped in quietly and sat still, trying to control their breathing. Marty smelled something burning, and waved at the smoke coming from Boobers’ vest pocket. The hash inside the burrito was still burning! Then they heard footsteps approaching, and Mr. Ball climbed a couple of flights above them and paused, listening, and went back down. They could see him breathing hard, with his hands on his hips. Then, in a manner most unbecoming of an official of a public school, he screamed “Fuck!” as loud as he could, and returned to campus empty-handed.
The Three Musketeers were exultant at their narrow escape. They stashed the burrito and all their smelly paraphernalia behind a loose brick in the retaining wall. They thought better of skipping school for the day, but stayed out of sight for the first period after lunch. Missing classes was becoming no big deal for Marty, because he knew exactly how many he could miss and still pass. (He referred to them as “vacation days.”) They all hung out in Mr. Parker’s history class, because he didn’t take roll, and slept through most of the period. It didn’t take long before they got the word that Mr. McIntosh wanted to see all three of them in his office, pronto. Emboldened with the camaraderie of oppressed revolutionaries, they marched in defiantly with their heads held high. Mr. Ball was there, too, chewing on a corner of his ratty mustache and glaring balefully in their direction.
Mike, who often spoke brashly without thinking of the consequences, blurted out, “What’s the meaning of this? I’m supposed to be learning about the French-Indian War and Andrew Jackson!”
“That’s enough!” Mr. McIntosh’s normally benign face was focused and red. “We know what you were doing. Mr. Ball, here, witnessed you smoking marijuana, and climbing over the fence.” He waved his hand at the narc, who was seething with indignant impotence in the background.
“No he didn’t,” Marty retorted triumphantly, announcing the cover story they had concocted. “We were smoking cigarettes in a designated area, and climbed the fence to use our friend’s bathroom.”
Mr. McIntosh and Mr. Ball exchanged quick, exasperated looks. The vice-principal grabbed a pen and asked, “What’s his name?”
“We don’t have to tell you his name. We didn’t do anything wrong,” Marty said matter-of-factly, as if reciting the Articles of the Constitution, “Why are you taking us out of class? Shouldn’t we be learning? Isn’t that the point of going to school?” He was skating on the edge of some very thin ice, but was enjoying the counter-culture drama immensely.
Mr. McIntosh’s oval face was transforming from pomegranate red to eggplant purple, and Mr. Ball’s lips twisted into flesh pretzels, with eyes popping out like hard-boiled eggs. Marty suddenly realized that he had the munchies! But the “cops” knew they were defeated and oh man, they did not like that one little bit! “All right,” Mr. McIntosh said, after a staring contest that lasted over 10 seconds. “Get out of here. We’ll be watching you!”
“Yes sir, we’re used to it,” Mike said over his shoulder. They all exchanged gleeful looks outside his office, but the hardest part of taking their leave was waiting until they were out of the office building to begin celebrating.
“Yeah! Stick it to the man!” Boobers raised his fist in a Black Panthers salute. The white-bread school secretaries (who had been listening) were already afraid of him because he was half black, and they quickly resumed clacking nervously on their electric typewriters. The three victorious revolutionaries burst out the double doors into the hall, laughing and gasping for air.
“What the hell was in that burrito, anyway?”