Foreshadowing in Gray – Essay

     I didn't see it coming, and I fuckin see everything coming.  I was wandering aimlessly through the halls of Johnson County Public High School, skipping class, and trying my best to avoid anything that might be considered work.  It's the hump day before Christmas vacation, and I'm in my junior year of incarceration.  I have no doubt that my sentence is unconstitutional in its severity.  Its like any other high school in middle of the road, middle class, Mr. and Mrs. small town boring America.  The hallways are painted with the usual blah colors, and the rows of lockers show a lively coating of blue or red in a misguided effort to cheer up the prison atmosphere.  The same might be said for the fresh day old wax job given to the scuffed up tile floors that just gleam with dullness.  I occasionally meander past a classroom, where some indifferent drone spouts out sentence after sentence, and word after word into the faces of some mindless zombies, sleeping in militant rows, lined up toward a dust covered chalk board.  But, I have to be here, so here I am.

     In my ever-present vigilance for escape from this concentration camp I had been placed in, I decide to check out the tar pit, hopeful to find some allies in this quest.  The tar pit is the one vestige of free thought and action that we, as the cattle, may escape too.  Strategically out of sight behind the cesspool, so called the cafeteria, so the bosses can hide it, and visiting dignitaries won't wander into it by mistake.  The actions of those inmates stupid enough to go there are closely monitored by the guards.  Its just a piece of snow covered black top, where losers may go in freezing temperatures to wrap blue colored hands and faces around cigarettes in a slow painful attempt at suicide.  If you're lucky, on occasions you might be able to smuggle in a nickel bag.  The screws never check too hard for that, I guess anything to keep the cattle from stampeding.

     Walking out into the pit, the cold stings through my thin sweatshirt and denim jacket.

     “Hey, man, Cowboy.” I have no idea how I got that fuckin name.  You see, I'm a six foot, hundred eight five pound mass of twisted ideas.  So a lot of people who don't know me thing I'm this crazy guy.  My friends say that I'm just a free spirit riding somewhere out on my own range.

     “Whatch'a doing dude? Come on over here, got a little somethin for ya”.  It was Liz and Tonto.  They were standing just on the edge of the small crowd who've gathered themselves in the pit.  They must have been cutting class too, since none of us are usually free at this time.  It's around 10:30 in the A.M.  As for the rest of the people out here, I don't know.  They're just trying to ease their souls and avoid the guards while they do it.  Speaking of the screws, there don't seem to be any around, I wonder what's going on.

     “Hey”. I say, shaking off the cold, walking over and giving Liz a bear hug.  Afterwards, I have to take a minute for myself, to let all the sexual desire for Liz, creep back into the recesses of my mind.  With that done, I turn to shake Tonto's hand, after all we're just assholes, we're not savages.

     “So whatch'a got?” I ask.

     “Just this.” is Tonto's stoic reply, and the two of them quickly pull me in close so no one besides the three of us can see.  Then Tonto plucks out a bottle of Jack from his coat pocked.  Letting go, I grab hold of the bottle and drink down as a big a swig as I can. 

     “Yo, Cowboy, how about leaving some for the rest of us”.  Of course, Tonto wants another swig for himself.  He always hates it when anyone else has somethin which he wants.  I take a second shot anyway and, when I finish, I pass the bottle over to Liz.

     Sometimes you can get away with sneaking this stuff in too, as long as the guards don't see the effects starting to take hold of you.  Not wanting to get caught, however, we only pass the bottle around once before Tonto puts it back in his pocket.  We move back into the meager crowd that are the pit regulars.  We know we have the bottle, they know we have the bottle, hell, the screws probably know we have the bottle, but no one cares as long as we keep in line.

     Tonto's real name is Jason, but because he looks and dresses the part of an American Indian, we just call him Tonto.  He'd wear these brown suede knee high moccasin boots with suede tassels on them, along with a jacket that matches.  Rounding off this attire, he'd wear every day, with feathers woven into his long dark hair and a stud earring.  The sight of him is enough to make any pilgrim circle the wagons.  He's simple though cause you either like him or you hate him.

     Liz, on the other hand , is different.  She's a schizo, she's at least two different people. Like a candle that burns at both ends, on one side she'd be nice girl, who tries to follow the rules and conform.  On the other side she's a wild cat, “Betty Boop”.  She stays in all the honor classes, but hangs with some of the nastiest people I've ever seen.  Maybe it's cause of her family, I don't know, but she's always having to bail her brothers out of the joint, not that they're not cool or nothin.  Liz is like an Italian bombshell, arguable one of the prettiest girls in the camp.  But also arguable one of the bitchiest.  Not the kind of girl I'd ever have a chance with.  She was more Tonto's type.  Then every girl is Tonto's type.  I'm always playing John Wayne to his Geronimo, but that's OK, cause you know that The Duke's always kicking the Indian's ass in a fight.

     Once in the crowd, I bummed a C-stick from Liz, she always has plenty.  We lean on the outside wall to the cesspool and lite up, careful to avoid those areas of the wall that had fallen victim to massive ketchup packet, saturation bombing strikes.  Tonto went to check around to see if anybody was carrying, he doesn't like regular cigs.

     “So what's going on with you, seeing anybody?”

     “No... Not really.” She says and smiles.  Sometimes she can really brighten this Hellhole up.

     “Not really, what the fuck does that mean?” I say, trying hard to suppress the smile that was creeping into my face.

     “A couple of guys, nobody you'd know, nobody any good”.

     “I can't believe you,  How many guys do you want?”

     “Just one”.

     “So who's that?”

     “What about you, Cowboy , any fillies in the stable?”

     “SO! What are you guy's fuckin talking about?  Who's fuckin who?”  Tonto came back sucken on a non-regulation cig, obviously somebody is holding.

     “I don't know” I say.  “Who are you fuckin these days?”

     “Well let me see”.  Tonto starts to look out over the small crowd like all the girls in it were on a special menu for him alone.

     “I think I'll start with her, and then her, and maybe her over there.  The rest are just skanks”.

     “You wish,” was Liz's reply to that.

      As we stand in the cesspool talking, this asshole jock comes to the door leaning outside and gives Tonto the finger.  He's a big guy, probably a senior, but he won't come outside.  Not alone anyway, this ain't his space.

     “Who's the fuck,” I say.

     “I don't know.” Tonto replies. “He and some of his asshole friends came after me earlier”.

     “Bobby Green.” Liz adds.

     “What's his shit with you?”

     “I don't know.”

     “His sister,” Liz says with a look of disgust for Tonto.  “She's the freshman cheerleader I saw you with yesterday.”

     “Oh, nice rack for a freshman,” is all Tonto says.

     I start to walk towards the door, when Liz puts her hand on my arm to stop me.  Taking a small pause to look into her eyes, I know she's nervous and doesn't want me to get into a fight.

     “Let's get the fuck out of here, and finish our bottle,” Tonto says.

     Tonto will always rather walk away from a fight.  It's not that he can't fight cause I've seen him in some real beauts.  With a little help, he always wins too.  Tonto says he's got better things to do then fight.  Looking to the door again I see that the jock has left, gonna get more of his friend.

       “Ok, let's go,” I say. I'll see them again.

     Finishing off our smokes, we go to empty the bottle.  To do that we were going to have to move around the building.  As we start to go, the clasp from Liz's necklace brakes and it falls to the ground.  Neither she nor Tonto seem to notice it.  I guess it;s fair to say that I spend a lot of  time looking at Liz's tits, so I guess it'd be no surprise that I see it fall.  I don't know why but I wait for them to start going, then go over pick up the necklace and put it in my pocket.  I mean, it's not worth much, she had told me when she got it that it'd been a gift from her grandmother.  I know she'll miss it when she realizes it's lost, but I just want it.

     When we are around the building and securely out of sight, Tonto takes out the bottle and we begin passing it around.  After a couple of sips Tonto looks at me and says

     “So, Cowboy you gonna give it up or what.”

     “What the fuck you talkin about?” is my answer, although I already know.  What I can't figure out was how he knows.

     “I said, You gonna give it up or what!”

     And I said “I don't know what the fuck you're talking about.”

     “You know what I'm talkin about.”

     “Fuck you I do.”

      “Fuck you, you don't.”

      Well, I see where this was going.  I don't want to hurt Tonto so I start walking away.  That is until Tonto grabbed my arm and pulled me around. 

     “Mother fucker, Cowboy,” he says, “I'm talkin.”

      Maybe, it's the Jack that was in me, cause this was all I need to hear and I lay him out.  It was just one punch.  I bloody his lip and send him sprawling out into the slush.  Liz goes down almost as fast as Tonto does.  She grabs him, before he can try and get up, and holds his hear in her lap.  She looks up at me with murder and hatred in her eyes, so much so that I take several steps way from her without even realizing it.  But that's when I see it, that's when I know he's the one. Tonto is the one she wants. 

     Once, she's certain he's all right Liz tries to make a beeline for my throat.  She'd have made it to if Tonto didn't grab her and hold her back.  Tonto knows better.  Knows that there's no use in fighting me.  I'll hurt him, if he tries.  I reached into my pocket and give the necklace to her.

     “You dropped this back there,” I said.

      She grabs the necklace from my hand and looks from Tonto to me and back again, looking confused.  Maybe she really is confused, she doesn't say anything.  That's the only fight Tonto and I have ever gotten into.  I help him to his feet: he gives me a look and a smile, telling me I shouldn't have done it.  Taking Liz into his arms he kisses her with hunger letting me know that she is his now.

     The three of us head for his Camero.  We walk silently, avoiding the guards where we can, and ignoring the one's we can't avoid.  Tonto has his arm around Liz and I walk beside them both.  At the Camero, I get in the back seat and they take the front.  The car isn't much to look at, but when Tonto lites it up, and those ponies kick in, it's as fast as hell.  Besides its better than my car, a blue shitvette.  We drink the bottle as we drive, there's no need to worry about the cops around here, they only do PR work.  You see the kids in our town don't have any drinking or drug problems, if it isn't for people coming in from the larger cities around and messin' up our town.  Hell we wouldn't need the cops at all.

     So, we drive around for a couple of hours looking for other people who, own 77 Cameros.  See, Tonto can't afford the parts to fix up his car, so we'd go out and take them off of other people's cars.  Besides the need, it's a real rush.  Fuck I remember a night when, Tonto,and Jimmy the Priest (Jimmy got his name cause he went to Catholic school) took out this guy's carburetor, while he was home sittin in his liven' room watchin TV.  It was fuckin beautiful, a Holy double pumper.  Anybody who puts that kind of equipment in there car and doesn't at least put it in the garage deserves to have it swiped, but that's another story.