The end of a primitive rite.
It’s not that serious, Chuck…… The fire truck was standing by.
Someone’s mom took Dan and I to the high school football field to bear witness to the football pep rally the night before the homecoming game. Autumn was leaking in, muscling a chill once the sun set. Loose jackets were zipped. The long denims came out, and we tried our best to make them look worn and used.
A crowd gathers by the football field, near an end zone. No lights, just a horde, more than we’d ever seen.
Not a creature was quiet. People milling everywhere, all these tall blonde high school people. Cheerleaders in short outfits and saddle shoes. Football players as tall as the Jolly Green Giant, decidedly less jovial.
Then they lit this big pile of wood and trash and flames quickly soared, somewhere between clouds and the crab nebula. Cheerleaders lead the assembled multitude in rah-rahs. The band plays; everyone sings and shakes pom poms. Girls dance around the flames, nubile shamans. Boys slip into the shadows, drinking from semi-concealed cans. In the distance, cigarettes glow near the fieldhouse. The team was introduced, the coach sermonized.
We were passing into our new identity– the next crop of Spartans. Yes, son, someday all this will be yours. Well, geez, for all this the least we could get is go-go girls doing the frug. Or maybe some Rolling Stones cranked up loud. Hell, we didn’t even know the other school or what this ancient quasi-religious rite stood for.
As it turned out, this was the last bonfire. When rain fell, our football field resembled the monsoon Ganges–thick dark mud, festooned with the occasional tuft of green. For the next 4 years our football games were played in the city, on the AAA Baseball team’s field. A rich school like ours could not have a crappy field; what would the society pages say??
The night had a decadent scent of a neanderthal rite of passage–flames, singing, chanting. But you know what? The memory stayed with me, still see those flames on crisp fall nights. And yes, you could make analogies about burning fires in our guts, as we were joining in the community of high school sports (and watching the team be publicly spanked the next day). But we BELIEVED. Not in some pagan belief, but something concrete–our school. The concept of unity, no longer vague and obscure, but real and as passionate as blood in our veins.
Thanks to living at home with a monster, I already tuned in to moods and vibrations in the air, I sensed uneasiness. Boys were glancing at someone moving near the fire. Then he came past us–a tall, broad-shouldered boy clad in worn jeans and a beat-up old Army coat.
A kid next to us whispered, “Shit, there goes Doug.”
Doug who?
“Doug Butt-kicker.”
More next time