The Yearning.....

[Ray]

Things were different that school year. First through fifth grades at the southside campus of patona city schools mustered a week early. This allowed the buzz to abate somewhat before the kindergarten scholars arrived. Then the second week, just the kindergarten boys attended class. Finally, the third week came the "sugar and spice and everything that is nice" as the old saw says. This was when he first saw her. Can a five year old fall irrevocably "in-love" at first sight? Well, john-john thought so the millisecond after he had seen angie.

The elementary school nearly filled all of the real estate on daley between vanderhoot on the north and parker on the south with playgrounds on each end. It was brick clad cinderblock on slab with a flat roof that hid a dozen classrooms, gymnasium/basketball/volleyball court and lunchroom. A lack of archetectural foresight omitted space for a library, but on the vanderhoot end, the land fell sharply from the building down to street level. Excavations were accomplished under that slab for the construction of a detached basement where the new library was installed leaving room for two kindergarten classrooms. This new level was affectionately referred to as "the cave" what with the optics of its yawning concave entrance observed from the vanderhoot street perspective.

It was under the bright fluorescents of "the cave" where/when little john-john first saw the vision of little angie. The imps were arranged at their respective round tables by alphabetic order, angie's surname beginning with "G", john-john's with "H". They evolved from round tables to desks in rows the next grade and for the following dozen years, john-john enjoyed the sight of angie's shoulders and the aura of her corn silk coloured hair. True, from the sixth grade on, they changed classes but in homeroom and those classes they shared, angie always sat just two feet to the fore.

It is also true that the wee couple did not exist in a vacuum. Others observed their mutual attractions to and affections for each other. Word got back to john-john's peeps where his mom and aunts and elder all sisters gently but adamantly discouraged the infatuation. They all were aware of poor little angie's antecedents and living conditions. She was being raised by a great-grandmother, both her mom and grandma being variously either incarcerated or otherwise involuntarily institutionalized in court ordered drug rehabilitations. Further, angie's living conditions were not of the best morally speaking, this great-grandmother being the infamous maude _________, retired madam of one of patona city's disreputable dens of iniquity. With a constant turnover of lecherous "uncles" and step-dads and step-granddads, poor angie was exposed to sights and sounds far too mature for her tender senses and to be brutally frank she ultimately would practically lose her virtue in that home.

But as time rolled on enough for john-john to understand the significance of such things, his love for angie only increased the more. There was little he could do to help her plight but he vowed to forevermore be there for her and perhaps in the indeterminate future, be her lawful wedded protector. Day in and day out of the school year they were rarely apart but during the holiday breaks and summer vacations john-john missed his little angie with great yearning.

Despite the machinations of the well meaning females in his family to keep the young lovers apart, john-john registered for every church vacation bible school in and around patona city and made sure that angie was invited. Not only that she was invited but that each church's van ministry would be sure to fetch her. The various churches were careful in the scheduling of their respective bible schools to not to overlap and interfere with the others so a child could go day and evening, four hours at a time, four-five days a week for a full month and a half. The boy's mom could not understand why he was so interested in so many different bible stories from so many differing doctrinal perspectives but it were free and could do him little harm. She had no idea that he was arranging his otherwise lonely summer vacations to get his beloved angie away from her unwholsome home environment and into his proximity as often as possible.

Then the summer before they were to graduate up from elementary to middle school, angie did not show at any of the various vacation bible schools that john-john, as was his custom, had registered her for. It was a lonely vigil for the lad to endure all of those biblical life's lessons without the benefit of his beloved by his side or across a table. Unknown to him, his elder sisters, in their socializing, had seen angie at the city swimming pool and skating rink and drive-in theatre. The sisters reported to mom and aunts and incessantly gossiped amongst themselves and their catty peers about little angie's sudden and early blossoming into womanhood. They also observed and jealously commented that angie's wardrobes had not been updated to her new dimensions by her great-grandmother and that angie had become a big "hit" with the boys on the juvenile social scene.

So john-john, still smarting from missing his beloved that summer, arrived to middle-school wholly unprepared for the sight of a suddenly matured angie, bra-less and shoehorned into her older prepubescent sized attire. Nor was john-john emotionally prepared to deal with the jealousies of all of those older randy boys sniffing around her.

They were still seated fore and aft of each other in homeroom and the classes that they shared but angie's new look, all busty and voluptuous, and the attentions that she invoked had formed an imperceptible barrier between them. She was as desired by him as always....actually more so as his hormones kicked-in but he had diminished, in her eyes, from "puppy love" down to "just like a brother" and eventually "just friends".

So followed six more school years of agony for john-john to have to see his beloved sparked by unworthy hounddogs and to hear those same incorrigible, randy illegitimates pitching woo to/at her. So despondent was he that he forsook the senior year spring-break trip to dauphin island altogether and mustered with uncle "w's" boy scouts without even saying goodbye to angie.
He wound up in the babylonian sandbox with a careless, fatalistic demeanour and distinguished himself under fire and the sight of a roadside i.e.d. rather thrilled him instead of frightening.

Then some two years later, in the rugged mountains of pashtun, he was the man of his company often chosen to occupy picket outposts remote from the wire that were the targets of sniper and r.p.g. enfiladeation. It was on one of these lonely rocky krags where the taliban had dialed-in distances and angles that he and another had repelled nigh-on a hundred murderous musselmen hell-bent on a late night raid. When the relief squad arrived with the dawn they found the two brave americans nearly drained of blood and blue with hypothermia and parched with thirst. They were lifted to and stabilized at bagram with a long recovery at landstuhl before getting their walking papers at walter reed.

How john-john went from recently discharged wounded combat veteran to being a merchant marine wiper striking to be a qualified waterman in the bowels of a pacific fleet replenishment oiler is too long and complicated a narration to include here. How he nearly lost his sight while standing watch to a burst steam sample line to a pressure gauge would take too many words to explain. Suffice to simply and briefly say that he endured the long-haul from bahrain to bremerton on light duty and mildly sedated in an effort to protect his injured eyes from being rubbed/scratched by his restless fingers. One thing must be mentioned that is essential to the narrative. While serving on this oiler in the pacific and Indian oceans, he reconnected via social networking with his beloved angie, now single and therefore "available". True, if the fotos on her pages/feeds were true to scale, then she had put on quite a bit of pork but he did not care. Roundly obese or not, she could be.....no, confidently w o u l d be his someday !

Meanwhile, back in time and in patona city, angie became the everloving wife of a framing carpenter name of hall and squeezed out three of his spawn before letting herself go, healthwise speaking. She was once what was colloquially known in those days as "built like a brick s--t-house" Being barely sixty inches in height, there was no room for her to stouten with motherhood but out. Fifteen stone or one-ninth of a ton on just a three cubit frame put her decidedly in the "round" category but by all accounts and appearances the framing carpenter hubby was content with a bride that resembled a manhattan thanksgiving day parade captive balloon.

But alas, when baby number four was squeezed out he/she/it sported the brownish complexion and beaked nose of the somali trailer park landlord who had all the good pills complements of his m.d. brother in atlanta. The framing carpenter hubby was long suffering and quick to forgive but he had his limits. When bairn number five came out browner still and rather resembling the nubian pulp-wood cutter three trailers down but one, angie soon found herself estranged, shunned and evicted. Custody of her three legitimate offspring were divided amongst her in-laws. The brown and browner ones became wards of the state with the hopes of being adopted while yet young.

And it followed that angie descended in a spiral of substance abuse and promiscuities and petty larcenies. It was the court ordered rehab that sent her on the straight and narrow and set her rising to sweetness and light. In the automotive components manufactory where her probation officer found her a sewing billet, she seemed to thrive. She made a friend of the bi-vocational pentacostal pastor who kept her parts bins stocked and her sewing machine in working order. It was he who led her in the way of holy redemption and suggested that she move far away, geographically speaking, from her tarnished reputations to a brand new start. After all, her children were in better maternal hands than she had ever thus provided.

So she eventually wound up all alone in the pacific northwest dealing plates laden with calories and cholesterol off the arm in a twenty-four hour diner by night whilst attending nursing courses by day. It was here in tacoma that she reconnected electronically via social networking with the boy who had sat behind her in class(es) for thirteen years. Her john-john of juvenile puppy love was heading east across the big blue expanse of salty. They arranged to meet at the naval medical complex on a certain date and time, subject to scheduling corrections due to the oiler's progress. This medical complex was quite out of her way and inconvenient to her normal haunts but she had interned there as part of her training so she knew where it was. Another problem was that john-john had no working knowledge of the area and did not know exactly where the ship was to moor. There were as many as five possible locations spread over eighty square miles.

So the morning came that amongst the fogs, where the open pacific becomes the salish sea was sighted landfall was imminent. He was able to email her to plan to be at the hospital by 1130. The ship was expected to moor on the old shipyard side at 0930 and he was to take the ferry the few miles up the small "n" narrows to the administrative area of the new base. It was a long and impatient anchor/mooring watch transit, however. The way from the open ocean to any of the five mooring possiblities was tortuous and convulated and further complicated by intense tidal currents. It is said that the transit through puget sound is so lengthy that it is only exceeded in time/distance by the trip through the chesapeake bay or suez canal.

So the oiler came to port and john-john and seabag went ashore then, after asking about for directions boarded a ferry. Much against the advice of sickbay, he had a 10x monocular to aid the impaired vision of his injured eyes when looking ashore. It was not only a question of eyestrain but the potential if the rubber eyecup actually causing further physical damage. The first thing he noticed as the water was piling against the bow of the ferry was that there was a motor launch tethered alongside the starboard side with two men transferring packages/parcels to and fro. Chatting with fellow passengers, he had been advised to, after passing under the two bridges, look for a bay and the hospital to port.

So after passing under the second bridge and as the waterway widened to port he began using the monocular to spy ashore. He saw a small municipal waterfront quay and a crowd of several hundred people comp!ete with a brass band and banners welcoming the arrival of a big boat or small ship with the white and orange color scheme of the coast guard. As he scanned the crowd with the aid of magnification he thought he saw her. She had written via email that she would be dressed in green/blue scrubs and waving a white handkerchief. Sure enough, apart and slightly elevated from the crowd at sea level he could, with his injured eyes further blurred by the wind and salt air and tears of joy, make out her outline as she waved the hanky.

On an imprudent impulse influenced by the opioid induced dreamy purple fuzz he was under, he abandoned his heavy seabag and rushed aft, portside to where the postal contractors motor launch was tied with its outboards still idling. With superhuman strength he swiftly dragged the two workers aboard the ferry and simultaneously unknotted the bow and stern lines before anyone had a chance to stop him. Before he could push the tandem throttles forward, the tidal current hit the launch and pushed him astern into the screw wash of the ferry. He quickly recovered control and caught up with and passed the ferry with a commendable rooster tail trailing behind as he crossed the ferry's bow and headed to port. He was quite heedless of the severity of his crimes. Highjacking a postal contractor's motorlaunch is greatly frowned upon no doubt.

What he did not know was that he was only halfway to his desired destination. There was still a formidable point of land and an one hundred and eighty degree turn to port and yet an altogether another small bay to cross. But all he could think of was his angie was right here just a quarter of a mile or less ashore. Leaving the boat unnavigated and still under throttle, he pulled alongside the floating metal dock and scrambled up the gang ladder to the fixed lower dock then up that ladder to the waterfront pier.

He passed through the crowds who had gathered to watch the lunatic come ashore as he headed in the direction he thought he had seen his beloved. Oh how the way inland and uphill seemed so far away across the expanse of the paved parking areas. There suddenly was the old-fashioned floor boarded scooter of a pizza deliveryman sitting unguarded with engine running. Before the rightfull user had time to object, john-john was a straddle and accelerating with pizza pies rapidly sliding out of the insulated box to the pavement with sickening splats.

The crowd readily parted as he gunned the contraption forward, gibbering with a maniacal laugh, "Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen! On! Comet, on! Cupid, on! Dunder and Blitzen— Now, dash away, dash away, dash away all !"
Through the crowded parking area to the street beyond he came to a fork. To the left he went, the street turning to arboreal sided graveled lane as he rose uphill leaving businesses and homes behind him.

Around and ever upward he rode until he came to a metal gate and a parked car blocking his way. Laying down the scooter, he skirted the car and its surprised pair of adulterers on their mid-morning tryst and leaped over the gate. Onward and upward he ran heedless of ankle turning and knee wrenching ruts and loose gravel. He didn't care that she was so round that her stubby arms stuck out severely to the sides. He didn't care that she had lain with spades and bourne their niglets. He did not care that she had abandoned her legitimate white children. All he cared about was that they would finally be together. He would finance her stomach reducing surgery so she could diminish in body mass. They would fast and abstain carbohydrates together. If she proved not barren and yet able to conceive after all of those instances of loathsome social infections then he would sire his own spawn out of her ! They would make a new family and live happily ever after !

And suddenly there she w.......

There was a green-blue painted municipal cylindrical water storage tank with a fluttering errant bedsheet trapped in its access ladder !


If you go to the southside of patona city today you will see the old abandoned elementary schoolhouse. Where the parker ave. playground was now sits portable classrooms used by the federal low-income students preschool and nutrition schemes. The former kitchen and lunchroom and gymnasium and fourth and fifth grade classrooms wing are used to house and care for overflow female inmates from the drayton county jail. The vanderhoot ave. end is used for storage by the patona city public works and parks & rec. departments. And in that basement once affectionately referred to as "the cave" there exists a literal cavern of dank decay and noxious vermin. It is there that you will find, among hundreds of others like it, an old-fashioned classroom desk of rusting sheet metal and mouldering plywood. There on its desktop is carved in a shaky pen-knife outline a stylized cartoon heart enclosing the words "angie g. loves j.j. h".

[JimT]

Now that could almost bring a tear. ..... almost ... or ...... maybe it's hay fever ....