PCH Chapter One by Kevin Draper

The blast of an air horn brought Harold back from dreamland and face-to-face with on oncoming semi. He threw the Harley into a steep right bank avoiding the collision and at the last second aimed the bike back towards the oncoming truck’s left headlight. The expected wall of wind pushed in front of the truck slammed him hard from the left and threw the motorcycle back on track and out of the path of destruction. Harold got a whiff of hot brakes and rubber and experienced an intimate view of the freight carrier’s rolling gear. The truck passed safely by as its trailing wake of turbulence buffeted the tired motorcycle rider.

The Pacific Coast Highway is treacherous because it is beautiful. It is a two-lane highway that wends its way up the West Coast of California and Oregon. It twists and turns through the forests for miles and then emerges from the trees to ride just above the ocean beaches. Here it overlooks cliffs of white and black stone. Rock formations the size of office buildings jut out of slate blue waters hundreds of yards away from the shore. This scenery from another world draws a motorist’s attention away from the business of driving. Highway One is fifteen hundred miles of motorcycle paradise and as dangerous as it gets.

Harold Olsen pulled over at the next scenic overlook to calm his nerves. The bike settled on its kickstand and the rider got off to stretch his legs. He stood a little over six feet tall and pulled off the helmet to free a full head of ragged dark brown hair and reveal a coating of stubble on his chin and cheeks. It had been a couple of days since the last shave. Years at a desk job produced an ample tummy and thin arms but the leather jacket gave the illusion of broad shoulders and a full chest. He was 46 years old and looked younger with heavy eyebrows. Intense eyes focused in a determined look stemming from his resolution to drive a motorcycle over a thousand miles along the coast in the numbing cold of late winter.

The duffel bag tied to the front forks under the headlight released a bundle of cold weather gear. He pulled a sweatshirt and pants over his street clothes and then stepped into the heavy leather pants and boots. The layers of clothing and the heavy boots made him walk like Frankenstein. Then came the leather jacket and the ski gloves. The sweat suit is for insulation. The leather keeps the wind out. You can’t beat leather on a cold day. It felt like his mother had dressed him for school but the warmth was welcome. It was late February and the air was humid and the coastal winds were icy. The sun sank low in the sky and the water began to sparkle.

His mind drifted back to warmer days at the beach near Seattle where he and Carol had lounged in the sunshine and swam in the surf. She would splash around in the shallows and then, escaping from the cold water, run up the beach and plop down on the towel next to him and snuggled under his arm to get warm. They had been married more than twenty years but her cold skin next to his still seemed as fresh as their first kiss. He would give anything to hold her in his arms again and rub his face in her cold wet hair.

They had met at a dance during their college years. He later learned that she was attracted to his roommate and accepted the dance with Harold to make the roommate jealous. While dancing with Harold she changed her mind. The roommate had a nicer car and was suave with the girls but Harold had a sense of humor and an air of honesty about him. During the dance she put her foot down wrong coming out of a spin and threw herself off balance. During the stumble she kicked him in the leg. She was so embarrassed that she clutched her hands in front of her mouth and apologized for her lousy dancing. Harold placed his hands on his hips and professed to her that the purpose of dancing was to have fun. “Are you having fun?” He probed. She laughed and admitted that she was. “Then there is nothing wrong with your dancing.” He corrected. When the dance was over he took her back to her seat and told her that she was really fun on the dance floor.

Married life hadn’t always been a bed of roses. There were deadlines to meet at the factory. There were times when he had to work late into the night, and then rush home for some sleep, then back to work early the next morning. Carol felt that she had been deserted and left with the entire load at home. There were times when he came home from a trying day at work and had to discipline the children because they ate their desert first. It seemed like he always had to be the bad guy with the children.

The seas crashed against the shore and the wind blew a mist of salt water over him. Harold stood gazing at the ocean vista and broke into a smile as he reveled in those memories. He missed the bad times as much as the good.

Life had been rough for Harold lately. It had been a little over two years since the death of his wife. He was an engineer by profession, a mathematician. He designed and helped manufacture airplanes for a living. It was a world of reason and logic where everything could be reduced to an equation and he could always solve the equation. Then Carol became ill and grew steadily worse over the last months of her life. At the time she needed him the most, Harold, the mathematician, the great problem solver, could solve nothing. God wanted her home and logic did not apply. The master engineer watched helplessly as his wife slipped away. In the months after her death endless hours were spent just walking through the Twilight Zone. It seemed like he could stand outside of himself and watch himself do things that Harold Olsen just didn’t do. Letters were written that were never sent. In the morning he would cry in the shower. Even after two years the pain and emptiness had not gone away.

His engineering job, the other half of his life, came to an end last fall. The company ‘downsized’ and offered an attractive severance plan. He took it. Some of the money was used to buy the red and black Harley-Davidson Heritage Special and he set out to see the world. Carol was gone. The kids were grown. There will be other jobs.

The sky was slate gray, the water was navy blue, and Harold watched as white waves broke against the black sand below. A cold wind forced him to take a step back. It was time to hit the road. There were still miles to cover before the next town and a warm bed for the night. He stiffly climbed back on the seat and touched the starter. The mellow sound and the subtle vibration of the engine let him know that there was life below. He let out the clutch and headed back down the road clicking through the gears gaining speed through the cold night air.

There is no one to talk to on a motorcycle; no radio, no cell phone. There is plenty of time to think as the scenery rolls by. His mind drifted back to a WildFire concert last August where they played a new song about a motorcycle rider. How did it go?

Fields of flowers and forests of pine
The air is bathed in fragrance divine.
Burned by the sun, frozen by rain,
Life is intensified, both pleasure and pain.

It had been his first attempt at dating since Carol’s death and he couldn’t remember feeling so awkward or out of place. WildFire was his favorite band and they played all of their best pieces including ‘Road Anthem’. When the concert started the lights all went out and the musicians found their places on the dark stage. One lonely spotlight searched back and forth and then fell onto the drummer. The drummer was just a boy. He looked too young to play in a professional band but seemed confident enough. He held the drumsticks by the wrong end and then, like a juggler tossed them spinning into the air, caught them by the handles, and started to play. There is something primal about the drums. Harold felt the music more than he heard it.

Here the road turned inland and began a long climb toward forested hills. As he gained altitude the road became steeper and the trees taller and thicker. Up in the hills the road began to turn and twist into long graceful banked curves and sharp hairpins overlooking an abyss of treetops. The road banked first left then right inviting more throttle and more lean. Harold leaned into the curves until his inside peg brushed the road. The toe of his boot felt for the rushing pavement to gauge the clearance. The world seemed to rush toward him sideways, the trees horizontal above his head, the road at his shoulder. He held the peg and his knee a fraction of an inch above the black surface until the curve switched and the motorcycle and rider swung like a pendulum to the other side and the other peg touched the road. For miles Harold clung to the handgrips and hugged the gas tank as the world swung and swayed around him. Finally the road straightened for a distance and entered a dense forest.. The broad branches reached across the road and merged into a canopy. He drove through a tunnel of green. The sound of his engine, echoed here, muffled there, made him feel that he wasn’t alone.

As the bike glided along between the trees his mind went back to the time he and Carol had vacationed at Lake Tahoe there on the border between Nevada and California. The winding roads were lined with trees like the one he was on now. The day was ending in a glorious sunset when Carol spotted a ship on the lake that looked like a Mississippi paddleboat and she wanted to ride on it. It was getting dark but he relented and bought the tickets. The cruise spent several hours on the beautiful deep blue lake as they viewed the snow covered peaks, the ski slopes, and the buildings on the shore. After sundown there was dinner in the dining room and then a band and a dance floor in the lounge. Outside he remembered holding her close as they looked up at a star filled sky and down at the reflection of the moon in the water. “Now aren’t you glad we came?” She chided. He gave her a squeeze and admitted she was right.

They rented a room in town for the night and finished the drive the next day. The towns and beaches they drove by the next day took on more meaning because they had seen them from the center of the lake. Harold wondered what he would miss on this trip without Carol to guide him along.

The motor home ahead slowed his progress through much of the rest of the forest. Eventually the highway descended from the hills and resumed its path along the coastal cliffs giving an eagle’s eye view of the ocean below.

The sun was setting and the wind turned cold. He caught a flicker of colored light and movement on the water and pulled over to investigate and rest from the cold. Something flickered again out on the water and he removed his helmet to better see. At first it looked like dragonflies skimming across a pond with their gossamer wings extended toward the sky. But the ocean is no pond and the dragonflies would have to be monsters. He shielded his eyes from the glaring sunset and identified wind surfers standing on their boards and leaning against their brightly patterned sails colored red by the sunset. Just ahead he spotted a pier jutting out into the ocean. He pulled on his helmet and remounted the motorcycle and headed for the pier.

He walked out onto the pier into the sunset and watched the sun touch the ocean. He could almost hear it hiss and sizzle as its bottom edge disappeared below the surface and lit the water on fire. The sky was already a holiday display of red and orange as the clouds, glowing like embers in a campfire, drifted slowly across the sun. The ocean mirrored the colors of the sky and set it to motion with its rolling waves the crests of which sparkled like diamonds as far as the eye could see. Harold stood in the center of the universe.

That night he found an inexpensive motel room at the edge of a small town and settled in for the night. He parked the motorcycle on the sidewalk below the window of his room and unpacked. The room was barely big enough for the double bed and a nightstand but it was everything he needed. He didn’t realize until he crawled under the covers how much the wind, the shivering cold, and the vibration had taken its toll. The tiny room became his cocoon and he soon sunk into a state of hibernation. When the sun peeked through the window he resurrected and packed the bike. He would have breakfast in San Francisco.

He soon approached the bay and its traditional early morning fog. He could no longer see the ocean or the inland hills. He traveled through a perpetual tunnel of mist and rain. The road was a black stripe and a yellow line that soon disappeared into a wall of gray. The road signs on his right were his only clue that he was approaching the Golden Gate Bridge. Eventually a railing appeared on either side of the road and cables extending from just beyond the rails reached into the sky. Periodically steel towers appeared on either side. Harold looked up but could not see their tops in the mist. The ocean below and the ships in the bay were only muted sounds in the fog.

Harold stopped in the Bay City for breakfast. Having satisfied his own hunger it was time to take care of the bike so he found the local Harley-Davidson dealer. It was time for an oil change and to have the bike checked over. The man at the service desk was short and heavy. He was bald on top. He had a goatee that ran from the corners of his mouth ending in a sharp point below his chin. Tattooed on his left arm were the words Live To Ride and on his right arm the words Ride To Live. The nametag on his chest read ‘Speed’. Speed said that since Harold was a traveler they would get started on his bike right away and they should be done in a couple of hours at the most.

He had been in San Francisco many times before on business and as a tourist. This time he was out to see the coast on his motorcycle. That afternoon after the shop was finished servicing the bike and lunch was over he was back on the road heading south. The road took a sharp bend to the left as it entered a narrow canyon and Harold threw the bike into a steep left lean. He cocked his foot out a little on the peg and his toe felt the road surface just before the peg touched. He used the throttle to control the turn.

The cold ocean waters meet the sunlit sands on the shore and the difference in temperature triggers powerful winds. They barrel down the canyons like invisible freight trains. As Harold rounded the bend into the canyon the wind struck him from the left with enough force to stand the bike up straight. He avoided braking in the curve and feathered the throttle and fought the steering to get the bike back into a lean and stay in the curve. You can’t see the wind so it is almost impossible to judge your lean and speed before you get into the curve and once in the curve it is too late to change it. About the time he recovered, the wind shifted and delivered an uppercut from the right nearly knocking him into the on-coming lane. He recovered again and faced the wind head on as the road straightened a little. The wind caught under his visor and tried to pull the helmet off of his head. His head snapped back and it took all of the strength in his neck to keep his chin down as the helmet bobbed and pulled at the strap. He rounded the next curve and an outcropping of rock momentarily shielded him from the air blast. The wind disappeared as suddenly as it had started causing him to lunge to the right. He corrected again but prepared himself for the next blast. As he left the shelter of the rock the wind again hit him just about head-on delivering a blow to the chest that made it hard to breathe. He clung to the handgrips. The fight continued as he reached the bottom of the canyon where a sign read: “Caution Wind Gusts”. “Thanks.” he said to himself. “I never would have guessed.” When Harold pulled into Monterey that evening he looked and felt like he had been in a street fight. He found a motel, unpacked the bike, turned up the heat, and that night he slept with the dead.

The next morning it was time to cruise the town and fill the immediate needs. The town stretched from the beach to the foothills and he drove along broad avenues amid sparse traffic. It was a weekday and most people were at work leaving the streets to delivery trucks and lost souls like Harold. Along the way he managed to find a good breakfast, a Laundromat, lazy tree-lined boulevards, some friendly people, a couple of signs advertising rooms for rent, and now this.



HELP WANTED
HANDY MAN
TEMPORARY DURING REMODELING


Harold stood in front of the South Beach High School and regarded the sign with suspicion. Yesterday’s trip along the coast had been cold and difficult and he had covered barely 300 miles. He had a long way to go but no particular time to get there. A couple of months in a town next to a picturesque beach might be just what the doctor ordered. He could continue his travels when the weather warmed up. He went inside.

The school’s regular maintenance crew was extra busy cleaning up after the construction work in the cafeteria and Harold’s new job was to relieve them of some of the day-to-day tasks around the school. It would only be for a month or so until they finished the cafeteria. By then the weather would be a little warmer. In the mean time all he would have to do is put up with two thousand insolent, screaming teenagers. At least he wouldn’t be lonely.

He looked down at the list: burned out lights, a sticking door, and a broken window. He decided to go after the broken window in room 215 first. It might be a safety problem. He buckled the tool belt given to him by the maintenance manager who had warned him about using sharp tools around the kids, and headed for the stairs. The bell to change classes had rung so this would be a good time to at least get a look at the window if only he could get through the crowd. As he reached the top of the stairs he hugged the wall to avoid traffic, rounded the corner, and smashed into someone who was waiting there.

Arms, legs, tools, books, dark glasses, and a white cane went everywhere as the two people tumbled to the floor. Harold untangled himself and pried himself off of the poor woman trying not to let the position look sexual. He grabbed her outstretched hand and helped her up. When she stood up he could see that she was slim, about five feet four inches tall. This helped explain the collision. He had been looking out over the heads of the crowd searching for a path and literally overlooked this little lady. She was well dressed in a white long sleeved blouse and navy blue slacks. She had long chestnut brown hair and a pretty face with a slightly pointed nose. There was a faint scar that ran across her forehead among the eyebrows. “Scar or no” Harold thought, “this is a pretty woman.”

“Excuse me!” Harold said. “I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

“That’s okay,” she said, “neither was I.”

He stooped down and gathered her books and handed them to her but she didn’t reach for them. She looked his direction but did not look at him. It was then that he noticed the white cane on the floor.

“You’re blind.” He said with some surprise.

“Yes.” She said. “Now hand me my cane so I can smack you with it.”

“Here are your books.” He said, putting them in her hand. “I’ll get your cane.”

He picked up the cane, her glasses, and the tools he had dropped and began to put things back in order.

“Are you the new handyman? I heard the tools drop and I don’t recognize your voice.”

“Yes, I just started. I don’t know my way around yet. I was just going to look at a broken window in room 215. I guess that’s the music room.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” She said. “We have been freezing in there for most of a week. The birds fly in and the birds fly out. One of them started a nest in the tuba. I won’t say what they did on the teacher’s desk. It’s just down the hall this way. Give me your arm.” He stood behind her and put a hand on each shoulder and started to guide her down the hall.

“No, silly!” She stopped. “Stand in front. Let your right arm hang naturally. I will hold on just above your elbow. I will follow wherever you go. Just pause for a second before you step up or down stairs and watch out so that you don’t run me into anything.”

“Do you go to school here?” he asked cautiously as they started to walk.

“Of course not!” She giggled. “I am the singing teacher here. Blind people have to work for a living too, you know. Go to school here? I am almost forty years old, my man. Say, are you this smooth with all the ladies?”

“No, sometime I run them over completely. I usually leave footprints up her back. That’s probably why I am still single. Here we are, room 215. It’s locked.”

She felt for the key and unlocked the door. “The room isn’t being used this hour or next so I left it locked. You can work in here now if you like. There it is.” She pointed directly at a window with a ragged hole in its corner. The draft through the hole had apparently been there long enough for her to get a precise fix on it.

“What is your name Mr. Handyman?”

“Harold Olsen. And what is your name?”

“Glad to meet you Mr. Olsen. My name is Mary Anne Palmer. Call me Mary Anne.”

“Call me Harold. Mr. Olsen is my father.”

“You’re funny.” She smiled. “Fix my window and I’ll forgive you for the clumsy meeting.”

The window wasn’t difficult to fix. The hardest part was finding where they kept the replacement glass down in the basement. He was careful to take accurate measurements, as dictated by his profession. This was his first time cutting glass but he had watched it done many times. After a couple of tries he got the size he wanted and, once upstairs, it fit perfectly.

As he replaced the calking around the glass the students began filtering in early for the next class. The first was a young man who came in without making a noise. Harold heard a chair move behind him and turned with a start to see a tall, slim, somewhat delicate looking, boy sit down at the drums. He had a mop of blonde hair that looked like his mother cut it under a salad bowl. His clothes hung loose on his frail arms and his pants were a little too long. His face wore a look of intent concentration. He picked up the drum sticks as though he was about to play except that he held the sticks by the wrong end. He absentmindedly spun them in the air several times, sometimes catching them by the right end, sometimes by the wrong end. “That reminds me of something…” Harold started to think, but he didn’t have time to complete the thought.

The door opened again and a taller boy and a dark haired girl, about his same height but somewhat heavier, walked in. It looked like the marines had landed. There stood dogface and the master sergeant. She wore the look of a medieval conqueror and this was her territory. She carried her book like a club and slammed it down on a desk.

“Get away from my drums, you geek!” The girl yelled, stomping towards the would-be drummer. “If you are really nice to me maybe some day I will show you how to hold the sticks.” She grabbed the sticks away. The boy at the drums looked at her and then looked down. “You’re not listening to me!” She lectured. “Get away from the drums! Go fool with something you know how to play with. But, not in public.” She added. Then she turned to her companion and ordered: “Help him to his chair, Steve.” Steve took a menacing step forward and the would-be drummer boy hastened to one of the desks and sat down, staring straight ahead. Steve backed off as a number of other students entered the room.

Harold cleaned off the new window and left the room as the students began to flow in for the next class. He couldn’t help but think, no, it wasn’t a thought, just a vague feeling, that he had seen the little drummer boy somewhere before.

Harold found the work easy and fun. He had always liked fixing things and he worked well alone. He repaired the door lock in room 153. He replaced the leaky faucet and replaced a toilet stall door in the boys’ room in the gym. He put a new light fixture in Ms. Schrader’s classroom. It was just a matter of dodging the students in the halls and planning his work so as to not interrupt someone’s education. In the evenings he explored the town from the seat on his motorcycle, took himself to the movies, or sat in his room and remembered Carol.

Not long after he and Carol bought their first house a gust of wind blew an upstairs window open and smashed it all over the floor. He stood looking at it helplessly. Carol looked up at him and prodded: “You design airplanes with windows and you can’t fix one?” He should have been insulted but the fact remained that she was right. So he took some measurements and went to the local hardware store and got some advice and materials. Then he returned home and replaced the window. Carol’s faith in him had led him to the conclusion that if someone could design and build something he could take it apart and fix it.

Harold saw Mary Anne in the halls every other day or so and often talked with her. It just seemed easy to talk to her and easy to be with her. He hadn’t felt that way in a long time.

“Be careful with that cane. You are going to trip someone.”

“Harold, how have you been?” Mary Anne answered with a smile. “I didn’t get a chance to thank you for fixing my window last week. I appreciate it but the birds are disappointed.”

“Just earning my keep. In fact, I earned enough to treat you to lunch in the cafeteria. Interested?”

“Let-me-think-about-that-for-a-minute-okay-I-guess-so. Take the lead.” She said, folding the cane and taking his arm. “I guess the bologna sandwich will keep until tomorrow. Such a pity, I put on two slices today.”

“Miss Palmer’s got a boy friend!” taunted one of the boys in the hall.

“Yeah,” Mary Anne called back with a chirp. “Ain’t he cute?”

At the cafeteria entrance Harold stopped to describe the scene to his companion. “Welcome to the South Beach High School cafeteria. It is decorated in early stage construction. There is candlelight dining in the corner because the lights are disconnected. That way you don’t have to look at the food, I guess. I see the special today is meat loaf. The clientele is mostly in puberty: wall-to-wall pimples, grease, and vacant stares. There is a couple crouched in the corner. Oh my God, they’re breeding!

“We can sit anywhere you want; I don’t mind the lighting. Their meat loaf is actually pretty good.”

Harold chose an empty table. When they were seated Mary Anne informed him. “Millions of years of evolution prepared this age group for reproduction. In only a hundred years we have created a society that is so complex nature cannot cope with it. In your grandfather’s day an eighteen year old with an eighth grade education could make a decent living, afford minimal housing, and start a family as nature intended. Today you have to have more education than Plato, know more mathematics and science than Newton, and have a bigger vocabulary than Shakespeare in order to earn enough money to buy a cracker box and start a family. We call that progress.”

“You have a point.” Harold said. “I studied in college for five years and worked for twenty years to earn the right to be a hobo. People used to do that for free.”

Harold headed for the food line and when he returned with the tray he sat down and dealt out the food. Then he took her right hand and guided it to the edge of the plate, then the glass, and then the fork. “Very good!” She exclaimed. “Where did you learn to do that?”

“I replaced a light switch in the library yesterday and found a book called Living without Sight. I figured that as long as I am working in a school I might as well do my homework. Have you always been blind?”

“No. I grew up like any other girl. I fussed with my hair and shopped for clothes. I went to dances and basketball games.”

“I was on the pep squad for a year and a half. The girls would watch each other’s moves and then we would critique our team performance later. By the end of the year we were better coordinated than the basketball players we were cheering. I once offered to show the football captain how to build a team out of all of his show offs and he got mad at me and told me to mind my own business. That was funny.”

“I hoped to meet a handsome man and get married some day. I dated a few of the boys at school. We went to football and basketball games and a couple of dances. I was starting to get serious about one of them, I think his name was David Sheffield, and I even let him kiss me in a movie once. But they were a long way from being men and I was a long way from being a woman.”

“I studied hard in school because I wanted to grow up to be a teacher, maybe, an English teacher. I was good at English. I enjoyed reading books and writing stories. I could spell anything. I can talk a lot too, did you notice? Social studies and history were fun and I got good grades. I stunk at math and science. I always thought a square root belonged to a deformed tree.”

“I was getting ready to graduate from high school, this high school in fact, and was coming home from a party with David and some friends. The driver in our car was sober but the driver in the other car wasn’t. He ran a red light and I went through the windshield. While all my friends were showing off their graduation gowns the doctors were trying to put my face back together. They saved my eyes but not the sight. The blindness was too much for David to handle and we drifted apart. I didn’t date much after that.”

Harold had been listening intently. “So, how does a blind high school girl go on to earn a college degree?” He asked. He remembered how hard college had been for him and he could read the textbooks and drive himself to school.

“I was mad as hell.” Her back straightened and she strangled her fork. “That stupid drunk took away my sight and my high school graduation but he was not going to take away my education. It took almost ten years and a lot of help but I made it through college and became a teacher in spite of it all. I teach music and speech. I am on the committee for handicapped students. Some of the students stay after school and help me read my mail and forms from the principal and such. The kids are fun. Have you always been a handyman?”

“Sort of. When I was a kid I always liked to take things apart to see how they worked. After a few years I actually got to where I could put them back together again. My father used to come home and yell at me because the doorknob fell off when he tried to open the door or the TV was unplugged when he tried to watch it. I got my engineering degree and then went to work for an aircraft manufacturer up north. I worked there for twenty years. The company cut back so I left my job and Seattle and set out to see the country.”

“How did they manage to hire an engineer as a handyman?” Mary Anne asked. “Did you lie to get this job?”

“Not exactly. They asked me if I had experience with electrical wiring and lighting. I told them that I had. I didn’t tell them that it was wiring computer aided control systems and cockpit displays. So far I have managed to pull off the ruse.”

“Hey, shit-head!” came a call from across the room.

“Ah, that would be Sylvia.” Said Mary Anne.

Harold turned toward the commotion and recognized the kids from the music room. Steve headed for the smaller boy who had been sitting at the drums. Steve grabbed the tray from the boy’s hands and threw it on the floor spilling food everywhere. A group of girls at a nearby table began to laugh. The small boy backed up a step and Steve grabbed for him and caught his collar. The small boy took a step forward, taking hold of Steve’s arm and pulled and twisted. Harold lunged across the room and put himself between the boys. The larger boy was obviously in pain and was trying not to show it. Harold sent the bully back to his table and told the small boy to pick up the food. “I know the other boy spilled the food,” Harold said, “But I’m not going to have much luck getting him to pick it up.” He and the boy bent to pick up the food.

“You’re never going to grow up if you don’t eat, Terry.” One of the girls said and they all giggled again. Harold saw the hurt on the boy’s face but the boy didn’t look up from his job. Harold went back to his table shaking his head. He remembered his own high school years. His education was important to him and he had worked hard in school. It had not been the road to popularity.

“Those are the kids I saw in your music class the other day when I was cleaning up after the broken window job. I know the bigger boy is named Steve because the girl called him by name. She seems to keep him on a tight leash.”

“Her name is Sylvia Chapman. I think she is part black widow. If she ever mates she will probably eat him afterwards. If she has children she will probably eat them too. Steve is not her boyfriend in the usual sense. He is insulting to everybody and no one will have anything to do with him. She seems to have a use for him and has him intimidated somehow. He has to act tough to keep her attention.”

“The boy they are after was sitting at the drums the other day when Sylvia and Steve came in. They chased him away. He seems harmless enough.”

“That would be Terry Elmer. He is a good student and kind of quiet. He is new in the school. I’m not sure where he came from. He offered to play in the school band and Mr. McGill has him playing percussion.”

“He hits the triangle or a cow bell once in a while.” Harold chipped in.

“That’s right. It’s not the most glamorous position in the band. Sylvia is the drummer and she is good at it. She takes great pride in the fact that she controls the tempo. Sometimes she deliberately pushes the beat so that the conductor will have to keep up with her. Terry is probably the last person she would allow to mess with her drums. That is her territory.”

Harold looked pensive. “She doesn’t seem to be attracted to the sensitive, intellectual type.” He said. “By the way, old Terry looks a little familiar to me. In fact he looks a lot like the drummer I saw last summer at a WildFire concert. He holds the drumsticks the same way too.”

“What would a professional drummer be doing playing the triangle in a high school band?” Asked Mary Anne. “He must be imitating one of his idols like a boy on the basketball team might imitate the moves of a professional he saw on TV.”

“You’re probably right.” Harold said, but he didn’t believe it.

After work he stopped to eat and think. There were a lot of questions to answer. What am I doing here? Where am I going? He thought about Carol and he thought about the drummer boy and couldn’t make sense out of either. Carol’s death was unwarranted. She was too young and soft and kind to have to suffer like that. Still, everyone dies. The ride back to the apartment was cold and stimulating. There was a cool breeze coming in from the ocean and the setting sun colored the western sky a deep orange which reflected off the windows on the east side of the street. Harold was not dressed for the humid ocean air. The air warmed him when he sat at the stoplight and then chilled him when he moved on down the road.

All the way home he puzzled over that high school kid and how much he looked like the WildFire drummer. Several times he dismissed the thought. Mary Anne was right. What would a professional musician be doing in a small town high school? He was just a kid emulating his hero and maybe dreaming of the day when he would be on stage. A triangle playing wannabe rock and roll drummer, no wonder the kids picked on him. Yet, the way he moved when he tossed the drumsticks was unique. Harold leaned the motorcycle into a parking space and lowered the bike onto the kickstand letting the front wheel fall to the left. The headlight fell on the garden wall much as the spotlight had fallen on the stage that night and the memory of the drummer boy came back.

“This is what we in the engineering profession call a hunch.” He said out loud to himself. He couldn’t count the times he had puzzled in futility over a shimmy in an airframe, or a delay in a hydraulic actuator, or an intermittent failure in a control system. He would pour over drawings and probe with test instruments for hours until he was thoroughly confused and ready to give up. Then the answer would pop into his head at the water cooler or in bed that night. Sometimes it pays to listen to that little voice inside. He clasped his cold hands and rolled them together in anticipation. “It’s time for some homework.” He said out loud. He put the bike up for the night and headed for the door. Once inside he stuffed his helmet on the back of a chair and went to the phone.

“Seattle Center information line. May I help you?” It was a woman’s voice with a slight European accent.

“I would like to talk to the person who books your performances.”

“That would be Mr. Jackson.” The voice on the other end replied. “I’ll see if he is still here. Sometimes he stays over a little while to meet with the performers who arrive in the evening.”

After a long wait a man’s voice came on the line. “This is Bob Jackson. May I help you?”

“I think so.” Harold replied. “Do you remember booking a rock concert last August for a group named WildFire?”

“Yes. That was a big sellout in fact.”

“Do you remember the name and number of their booking agent? I would like to get in touch with him or her. I’m doing a little research on their group.”

“Just a minute. I can look that up. Their home base is San Francisco but their business agent is in Los Angeles. I guess it doesn’t matter where your agent is if you are on the road all the time anyway.” Jackson chatted as he looked for the number. “Ah, here it is.”

The next day Harold met Mary Anne outside her classroom and took her to lunch. He may have put himself in over his head and he needed her help.

Seated at their usual table he got right into it. “I talked to the booking agent who handles WildFire this morning and learned something about our little friend Terry Elmer. I may have overstepped my bounds.”

“Whoa, whoa,” she said. “Back up a little. You just called WildFire on the phone and asked how are you doing today and what about Terry. Am I following you? You just picked up the phone and called WildFire?”

“Well, no. I had to call the booking agent at Seattle Center to track down their talent agency, and then find the agent who handles the group, and then play telephone tag for a couple of hours between maintenance jobs to get the lady on the line. But, yeah, I talked to her.”

“You tracked this undoubtedly busy person down like a bloodhound and asked her about a high school kid? I don’t believe you did that.”

“I do this for a living, Mary Anne. If I have an engine mounting problem I will call the manufacturer’s engine division, track down the engineer that designed the damn thing, and ask him what he had in mind when he did it this way and how am I supposed to structure the mounting hardware. He will tell me. It’s part of his job. The talent agent’s name is Marilyn Kelly and she was happy to talk about Terry. She said he is a really neat kid.”

“I can’t believe this.” Mary Anne broke in.

“Well then, you are going have a hard time with the rest of it.” Harold said. “I’ve booked the group to play at this school the first Thursday of next month.”

“What!” She dropped her fork on the floor. “See what you did?” she scolded. “Help me pick it up.”

Harold got up and retrieved another fork from the tray at the end of the food line and continued. “I need to know who in the school system to talk to in order to get permission to do what I just did. Does that make any sense?” Harold asked.

“Yes. No. What did she say about Terry?”

“Terry is sort of a substitute musician for the group. He can’t sing but he can play absolutely anything that makes a sound. He is a quiet, shy, and highly disciplined professional. He travels with the group and if their drum player gets sick he plays drums that night. If the acoustics in tonight’s auditorium are poor and they need another trumpet he plays trumpet. He has been traveling with the band almost from the day he was born, living in busses and motel rooms and educated here and there by tutors. Every musician, talent agent, and sound technician on the circuit thinks of him as family.”

“So, what is this musical genius doing at South Beach High School?” A mystified Mary Anne asked.

“He is twenty years old, although he doesn’t look it. He never graduated from high school. He felt that he had missed a crucial part of his childhood development, or something like that. Anyway, he took the year off to go back to his old hometown and finish high school like any other kid. The group bid him a tearful farewell and they are holding his job open for him. He is here to get his education and he is trying to fit in somehow."

Mary Anne shook her head. “Can you imagine growing up in the professional world, living on the road, moving from town to town, and then trying to fit into this crowd?” She paused with a frown. “But, why the triangle? Why is he in the band playing the stupid triangle?”

“I just don’t know.” Harold said. “But, it turns out that WildFire is on the road this month and next playing towns along the coast. They have rooms booked here three weeks from Thursday for a layover. Then they will be on their way to Los Angeles for a Saturday night concert. Marilyn and I reminisced for a while and one of us got the idea. Why not have them come over to the school and put on a demonstration? Sort of a jam session with the school band.”

“Why, Harold, if you can pull that off they will probably promote you to the boiler room.” She said with a little sarcasm. She hadn’t quite come to grips with it all yet. “Just how am I going to explain to the head of the music department and the Principal that our temporary handyman has just booked a world famous rock band to perform at our school? I mean, the music department and the staff will be delighted if only they can be made to believe such a story.”

“This is a little unusual, I suppose.” Harold admitted. “Marilyn is faxing the clearance form into the Principal’s office this afternoon. It was the only fax number that I could find at the moment. I guess we can go from there.”

“I wonder what Old Miss Pratt, the secretary, will say when she sees that form. I’ll talk to Mr. McGill, the head of the music department, and get him to settle it with the Principal. I’ll tell him that you sort of stumbled onto this opportunity through someone in your hometown. I guess that is one way to describe what really happened.”

“That is the problem with telling the truth.” Harold mused. “Sometimes it is just too strange to believe.”