An Acute Lack of Perspective
By Chris Allen
There were no shooting stars the night my older brother and I got caught taking a joyride in our father’s truck. Lying on my back in my front yard, I looked to the sky, but there was nothing to wish on, no hope of escape. We were busted. Randall, 13, and I, 10, pulled up to find Mom’s station wagon in the driveway—home much earlier than expected from a dinner. As the elder brother, Randall took the biggest share of the blame that night, but it was my fault. In my pre-adolescent desperation to be thought of as cool, I had gotten greedy.
The night before, we had taken Mom’s car out while both of our parents were at choir practice. The whole family had walked over to the church for Wednesday night supper and Bible study, followed by choir practice for our folks. This schedule was as dependable as the seasons, and since we lived only a few blocks from the church, Randall and I always walked home by ourselves. Neither of us had remembered to bring a key that night, so Mom had given me her’s.
When we rounded the corner on our street and our house came into view, the station wagon spoke to Randall. This sort of thing happened pretty frequently when we were growing up and I had learned to read the message from the expression on his face. Someone would pass in a Corvette or Camaro and he would smile, then grimace. “You want me,” the cars were saying, “but you’ll never have me.” An eighteen-wheeler would pass, and he would squint like Clint Eastwood about to draw his pistol in The Outlaw Josey Wales. “You couldn’t handle me,” it was saying and Randall would stare down his seemingly inanimate challenger. That Wednesday night after church, the station wagon said, “Take me, I’m yours.” We didn’t talk about whether or not we should drive the car. It was fated, beyond our control. We just did it. The only questions were where we would go and whether I would get a turn behind the wheel.
We both knew how to drive. Dad had seen to that. Living so close to the church, that big, empty parking lot begging to be used on a Saturday afternoon and Randall obsessed with cars, Dad had started teaching him the basics when he was only eight. I sat in the back seat during these early training runs. Sat is the wrong verb, really. I stood, both feet on the center hump of the drive train, my hands on the back of the front seat, my head craning as far up over Randall’s shoulder as it would reach, and watched every bouncing needle, every flickering dashboard light.
When I turned eight, I begged and pleaded for my turn at the wheel. Randall had gotten to, so I should, too. By that point, Dad had begun to think teaching Randall to drive so young hadn’t been the best parenting choice he’d ever made. Randall was pressing almost every weekend to drive not just in the parking lot, but on the neighborhood streets. I think Dad knew letting me start would be the first step toward turning Randall loose. His sense of fairness won out, though, and I quickly worked past the two-footed folly of the beginner and learned to stop, start, park, and drive as smooth as any boy twice my age.
Two years later, Mom’s keys in my hand, I was ready for the open road—at least for a few blocks. Randall let me take the wagon down our street and make the right onto Second Avenue, past our church, past our Sunday School teacher, Mrs. Pemberton’s house, past the Git’n’Go, past Checkers Pizza and the arcade, almost half a mile, all the way to the Big Star parking lot. I pulled in, careful to stay near the street and as far from the doors as possible in case some adult we knew might see us while walking in or out of the store.
Randall and I switched places and he took the car back onto the road and down to the number four stop light at Main Street. We sat there for ten jittery seconds, nerves dancing to the tune of “Every Breath You Take” on the radio before the church van pulled up next to us in the left turn lane. Mr. Hess had rounded up the folks too old to drive and was making his post-prayer meeting rounds.
I dove for the floorboard with a heartfelt, “Dookie!” I could handle the station wagon, but the fine art of swearing was still in a developmental phase.
Randall didn’t move. He saw them, saw me overreacting, but he didn’t flinch, just kept right on with, every move you make, every vow you break” like any sixteen-year-old with a legitimate license would have done.
I couldn’t see the light changing from down there, but I felt the car move as he pulled through the intersection. “Get up, you baby,” he said. This was always his favorite insult. Still is, I think.
“Did they see us?”
“We’ll find out later,” he said.
There was nothing we could have done if they had, but that scare took the fun out of the ride. He made a right a couple of blocks later and headed straight home. He parked the car after our two or three mile round trip and we went to our respective rooms to wait for Mom and Dad to come in, hoping with all our might no one we knew had seen us.
I huddled in my bed, my head wedged between my pillow and my radio, the latter tuned to Shotgun Stevens’ WOKI broadcast. It was “Beggin’ and Pleadin’ till you’re Bleedin’” night, a weekly exercise in self-degradation where the person with the least self-respect, the most willingness to grovel would be rewarded with concert tickets. That week, it was Duran Duran playing Neyland Stadium. I considered calling in, tying up our phone line by dialing and redialing until I got through, but I knew even if I managed to get on the air, even if I managed to out-whine, out-whimper, and out-wail the other callers, I’d never be able to talk Mom into letting me go by myself. Going with her or Dad was too uncool to consider.
I heard Mom and Dad come in that night, listened intently to the approaching footsteps with dread, but Mom just stuck her head in, told me she loved me, and wished me a good night’s sleep. I didn’t get one, of course, what with the adrenaline and the memory of it all.
Even so, I sprang out of bed the next morning dying to get to school. I had a strong sense of the social order, and I knew what we had done was the peak of cool for my age group. No one at North Clinton Elementary had ever driven a car, no one but me, and no trip to Disney World, no Ocean Pacific outfit, no parachute pants, no Pac-Man high score would keep me from being the coolest kid in Mr. Stewart’s class, probably in all of fifth grade.
I dashed in, put my backpack and lunch box under my desk, and leaned across the aisle to tell Jennifer Price first because she was a) sitting next to me and b) the cutest girl in my class. I didn’t have the whole boy-girl thing worked out yet, but it was climbing the priority chart with the determination of Reinhold Messner. I blurted the whole story out in a single breath, fully expecting her eyes to light up like the Flux Capacitor, but instead I got the combination hair-flip eyes-roll—the twin monsters of disbelief—followed by a, “Yeah, sure, Marcus,” delivered with enough disdain to make Prince feel shamed.
I tried to tell Carrie Finch, who sat behind me, when she came in a few seconds later, but Jennifer interrupted, told her not to believe me and all was lost. I gave up, pulled my spelling book out of my backpack and went to using that week’s twenty words in a sentence, hoping I could at least avoid getting in trouble for not doing the homework I had skipped in favor of the joyride, which was clearly going to be more myth than legend.
That afternoon, Randall and I got home and learned Mom and Dad would be going out for the evening with the Garners, a new couple from the choir. We hadn’t had a babysitter for over a year by then, half because Mom and Dad had decided we were too old for that sort of thing and half because we had so frightened the last one they weren’t able to get the young girls at the church to take the job.
That last poor girl had come home from college for the Christmas holidays and ended up at our house wearing a new coat. She was terribly proud of the fact the sleeves could be zipped out to make it into one of those puffy vests that were so popular at the time. Randall and I each got one of those sleeves and proceeded to beat her with them. She fled the living room, and we chased her through the house, swatting away, until she locked herself in our parents’ bedroom.
To us, it was just a new and interesting form of pillow fighting. To her, we were told during a stern talk from Mom, it had been a terrifying attack by dangerous, vicious boys. It’s all about perspective, really, and we were grounded for two weeks in hopes that we would gain some.
We did not.
Looking back now, it seems so obvious the only move was to go out driving again that Thursday evening. At the time, though, it didn’t occur to Randall or me all afternoon long. If it had, things might have turned out differently. We’d have had time to plan, consider the options, prepare for some contingencies. We might have gotten away with it.
As it was, I thought of it first, just as the sound of the station wagon faded away. I looked out the living room window at the Garner’s Chevette, thinking what miserable jobs they must have to be driving that car, and the light went on in my head.
“Did Dad take his keys?” I asked Randall.
He had just flipped on the television, but my question sent him down the hall faster than I could get off the couch to follow. Dad’s keys weren’t on his chest of drawers where he usually left them, but the spare key to the truck, I learned, was in his sock drawer. Randall had been in the habit of periodically going through our parents drawers for as long as I could remember. He rarely turned up anything useful or interesting, just the occasional R-rated movie we weren’t allowed to see, but always after we’d seen it at a friend’s house. The key, however, was paydirt.
We assumed we had at least a couple of hours before Mom and Dad would be back, so we headed for the highway. Randall wanted to see if he could get the truck up to 100 mph—faster than either of us had ever been, even with an adult driver behind the wheel. He made his way carefully out to I-75, using the blinker, making complete stops, observing the speed limit. We didn’t even turn on the radio. Once there, though, he wanted to open it up wide. I put on my seatbelt, fearful of a crash, but so high on adrenaline I couldn’t have considered stopping or turning back.
I watched the needle climb to 20, 30, 40, 50, the only sound in the truck the changing pitch of the engine and the automatic transmission working their way through the gears. Randall was edging up to 55, the speed limit then, when we passed a state trooper in the median. This shook even Randall’s confidence. He cussed under his breath and his eyes snapped back and forth from the rear view to the side view mirrors. When the trooper was out of sight, he pushed the truck up to sixty-five. At the first exit we came to, he eased up the off-ramp, turned left over the overpass, and got back on the interstate going North. He took our exit and ended the freeway portion of the journey after a mere twelve-mile loop.
While we made our way back into town, I couldn’t help thinking about Jennifer Price and the morning’s embarrassment. Here we were, out again, being seventeen kinds of cool, and the next day I wouldn’t be able to convince anyone it had happened at all.
“I want to go by the arcade,” I said. “Just pull up right in front and walk in like we own the place.”
My brother smiled, winked at me, drove on.
When we reached downtown, instead of taking Main Street to Second Avenue, Randall went out of his way to go by the police station. Three officers stood outside the front door smoking, and Randall waved to them as though he had every right to be behind the wheel. His confidence had returned.
I wanted to scream, jump from the truck and make a run for it, but I held it all in. I sat back in the seat and looked straight ahead like this was all perfectly normal.
Randall made two more turns and parked directly in front of the arcade entrance. We jumped out and eased our way into the building, slow, saying hi to all the kids hanging around outside waiting for their parents to come pick them up. I was disappointed, though because they weren’t kids from my school. Inside, I made my way around the circle of games and found my witness to the fifth grade.
Billy Hackworth, who sat behind Carrie in our class, had his head wedged into a crowd of kids watching some older boy crashing his way through a round of Outrun. The game was brand new and cost a whole dollar to play—unheard of at the time.
I tapped Billy on the shoulder.
“You think that’s cool? Let me show you something.”
He was skeptical, but he followed me out to the front of the arcade where Randall was talking to Tammy Price, Jennifer’s older sister. It is a testament to just how good an older brother he was and is that he reacted to my arrival the way he did. He didn’t try to act like I wasn’t there or run me off. He actually introduced me to her.
“You mind if I drive it home?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said. Then, “I’ll call you, Tammy.”
I walked around the front of the truck, and Randall tossed me the keys over the hood. He opened the passenger’s side door and waved to the gawking kids, saying, “Goodnight, everybody!”
We were off. I made the block watching in the rearview mirror as Billy and the others stood staring and shaking their heads on the sidewalk. I made two rights and took Third Avenue back to our block, glowing with the victory, the impending avalanche of prepubescent cachet. We had been gone less than an hour and should have been home free.
Then I saw the station wagon.
“Oh, shit,” we said, but there was nothing for it.
I pulled the truck into the driveway, turned off the ignition, and stepped out. My legs wouldn’t hold me. I crumbled on the grass, the driver’s side door still open, the dome light the brightest thing in my life.
Randall walked right in and took the brunt of it. I could hear the shouting, but I couldn’t tell what anyone actually said. My mind was a junk yard for broken thoughts, just fragments of nonsense excuses in a pile with feared punishments. No way was I going in that house. By the time they came and got me, Mom and Dad had vented the real ire and I got up and went inside without a word between the three of us. Randall and I were sent to our rooms while the Garners were dismissed.
Sitting in my bedroom, my mind quieted just the slightest bit, and I was able to focus on a single question. Why were they back so soon? I wouldn’t get my answer for two or three more days, but it turned out Dad had forgotten his wallet. They had gotten all the way to the restaurant before he realized it, so he turned around and came home to get it. Even knowing this, I couldn’t produce an image of it lying on his chest of drawers when Randall and I went back there for the key. We were both too focused on the adventure at hand.
Eventually, we were called back to the living room and given a good talking to. I know both of our parents wanted this to be one of those profound moments of disciplinary action, the kind of thing that sticks with a kid and makes him behave like a rational, mature human being, but the truth is they might as well have been Charlie Brown’s teacher. All I heard was, “Waa waa waa.” The next day at school, when I was soaking in the glory of having executed the coolest caper any of my classmates had ever heard of, Carrie asked me what my parents had said when they caught us.
I couldn’t tell her, had no idea.
I knew all about the punishment, though. Mom had put together a chart for my bedroom wall and hung it there between breakfast and the ride to school. Randall and I had been grounded for three months. We would get no allowance and go nowhere but church, school, and home in all that time—all the way to summer vacation. For the first month, we would have no desserts or other sweets. For the first two months, we would watch no television. In addition to these deprivations, we were given additional duties around the house: we were to do all the laundry, all the cooking, and all the yard work. As far as we were concerned, we were going to be indentured servants until the end of the school year.
Our parents were trying, of course, trying to get us to see the danger we were in with that stunt, the damage we could have caused. They wanted to teach us a lesson, and I, for one, learned a few things. I learned my brother was cooler than any of the other older brothers in our town—cool in the real, adult sense I understand now. He took responsibility for his actions and protected those he cared about, in this case, me. I also learned that being grounded doesn’t give you much of an opportunity to cash in your cool points. Above all else, though, I learned that nothing in all the known world is cooler than not getting caught.
——
Chris Allen is a former PR flack whose work has anonymously spun unsuspecting readers throughout the Southeast. Since earning an MFA from Southern Illinois University in 2007, he has engaged in more scrupulous work teaching English at Piedmont Technical College in Greenwood, SC.
Photograph used in conjunction with Flickr’s Creative Commons Agreement. It can be found, in its original form, at http://www.flickr.com/photos/89978611@N00/3009829122/.
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