My recollection is that it was a Monday.
Whatever the case, I know for certain that it occurred in the final week of school, 1977.
I was on the back row of the bleachers zoned-out, when I noticed Mark’s emerald Cadillac de Ville pull in. From our designated spot, to where the parent carpool deposited children every morning, was a clear site-line across a one-acre grassy field. He got out of the car, from a distance of maybe 75 yards and I saw him lift a large manila envelope, high above his head. My eyes widened.
I immediately slapped Glenn and Spencer, who were probably pencil fighting or arguing about Duncan yo-yos. “Look at Fischer, guys!” Everyone turned.
Mark was walking across the yard towards us, envelope exalted in triumph like an Olympic torch.
“It’s here!” he called to us from inside the carpool gate. Pandemonium erupted. Every one of the the third grade boys — Glenn, Spencer, Michael, Kevin, and me — jumped off the high end of the bleachers and swarmed towards our hero, at full speed.
Instantly we were pressing on him, clawing. He continued holding the envelope up, but as the shortest member of the group, even on his tip toes we were able to easily lay hands on the coveted gift package. “Guys, guys!” he screamed, truly angry, “You’re gonna rip it!!! Let’s get to the bleachers!”
I waived everyone off and we jogged back to our base as one organism, questions flying and hands still reflexively grabbing every step of the way. We climbed to the back row and waited for the goods. The manila envelope was blank on the outside but it was clearly jam-packed with something wonderful.
We sat silently, licking our lips, waiting for the gifts. “This came yesterday from Uncle Mel. Jessica sent each of us autographed photos!” Mark explained. None of us could hide the sense of awe.
“Open it up, man!” one of us interjected. A volley of amens followed. “Yeah! Let’s see it! NOW!”
“No!” he resisted, “We’ll open it when we get to class”, he explained curtly, as he put the envelope back in his Pinewood Acres satchel.
Mark had always been a timid, buck private in our army of six, but for the past three months he’d been allowed to behave like a third world general. Little Debbie cakes had been surrendered and countless bags of contraband pretzels and chips had been deposited into his juvenile Swiss bank account. He’d repeatedly been made the captain of kickball teams, even though he sucked at kickball. Toys were shared and occasionally outright gifted to this obnoxious caudillo. All of us had abased ourselves and eaten untold buckets of shit since Spring Break, in order to stay in Fischer’s good graces.
For me, it was just the price to pay for making contact with my movie star wife.
Mark took his Pinewood tote and tucked it under his legs, to protect it from prying hands. A chilly pause settled over the bleachers as each one of our brains processed the outrage that was unfolding. Then, three months worth of profanity spontaneously erupted from the top row.
“Fuck you, gaylord!” Spencer blasted, as he leveled a straight punch to the arm. It was the first act of aggression against Fischer in months.
“You’re off the list!” Mark shot back, rubbing his shoulder.
“Give it, you jerk!” Glenn volleyed, reaching for the bag, under his flabby thighs. A small tug of war ensued.
“Now you’re off the list too!” Mark added.
“That’s my photo in your bag!” I interjected, lawyering-up. This idea seemed to poke at the already-orange cinders in the fire and a fresh wave of oxygen came into the mob. “Give us OUR photos!”
“No one’s getting anything now!” Mark announced, clutching the bag under his legs.
Suddenly the whistle blew and Sheffield arrived at the bleachers to line us up for the pledge and the PA anthem. The angry murmuring and shoving continued all the way to the line-up for the pledge, as Sheffield stepped in with her finger to her mouth. I said the pledge that day, but my eyes were burrowed into the back of Fischer’s dwarf skull.
Following the anthem and the departure of the color guard, Sheffield walked us single file, back across the field to our cell. The grumbling continued. Spencer tried to snatch the bag from Mark’s hand while in line. As we walked into class, Sheffield was already giving us directives for the morning assignment. The low rumble continued as everyone sat down. She stopped. “Does somebody want to explain what this noise is about?” she inquired.
My hand shot up. She acknowledged me.
“Mark has pictures that belong to us and he won’t give them to us!” I cried in anguish as if passing a kidney stone. The mob chimed in lustily.
Sheffield, clearly seeing the unhinged emotion rising in the group, asked us to slow down and explain what we were talking about. I rewound the tape and started from the beginning, when Mark told us about Uncle Mel over by the spaceship slide. I was having trouble catching my breath during the run-on sentences, gasping for air with each punctuated new turn in the story “And THEN….And THEN…”
I poured my guts out before the judge.
At a certain point I ran out of steam, and to my utter amazement Mary Taylor finished the prosecution’s case. Mystifyingly, she knew the whole narrative and could present the argument better than me. “Mark promised all of the boys that they would get personal autographs and photos from Jessica Lange and they have been patient and nice to him this whole time.” I blinked rapidly, surprisingly emotional that Mary knew our plight. To this day, I still don’t know how she knew everything.
“They’ve been waiting a long time for the letter to come in the mail”, she explained. Sheffield looked over at me. I nodded.
Sheffield issued an instant verdict. I can remember the red, plaid slacks and yellow blouse she wore that day and exactly where she was standing in the classroom as she made history and took my side, for the first time.
“Mark, you have been promising those Jessica Lange photos. Those photos are not just yours. They are for Greg and all of the others. Now come up to the front of the class and open that envelope so we can read the letters and see the pictures.”
Fischer walked to the front with the envelope and he opened it standing right next to Sheffield who was smiling ear to ear. “These are pictures from Jessica Lange for each one of us…”, he murmured, haltingly. He reached into the envelope and pulled out a stack of, what I could see from my desk, were 8X12 color glossies of some sort. I was out of my seat now. Hovering like a vulture, straining to see.
“Hold them up so everyone can see!” Sheffield prodded him.
Mark turned the glossy photos around and raised the stack at face-level, oscillating them one by one across the classroom for all to see.
The first was a picture of Miami Dolphins placekicker Garo Yepremian.
The second was star fullback Larry Csonka.
The third was Mercury Morris. I think.
In the mid-70’s McDonald’s had a promotion–with every large drink you ordered, you would get an NFL player photo print. Mom had ordered a bunch of large drinks when I was in second grade, just so that I could get the collectible photos. I had one of Bob Griese hanging on my bedroom wall. And a few others that were just stuffed somewhere on my bookshelf. Every kid my age had those McDonald’s posters.
“Those ain’t from Jessica Lange, you fat liar!” I exploded, as I pointed my finger at him. “You got those at McDonald’s!!!”
For God’s sake, they even had the McDonald’s arches at the bottom of the photo!
The noise level in the classroom elevated exponentially as boys and girls were now equally protesting Mark’s tale.
“Liar!” “FAKE!” “Those aren’t from a movie star!” “STUPID!”
Sheffield was surprisingly gentle in pushing back on the mob. “OK, OK, that’s enough”, she said to the class. She turned to the Defendant and her voice slipped back into its familiar angst. “You lied to your friends”, she said bluntly, holding him under the tip of her spear.
Fischer’s fat face tried to weasel out of it. “No, no! My Uncle Mel got these from Jessica Lange—“
“It’s from MCDONALD’S when you order a large Coke!!!” I interrupted. Every boy in the class affirmed this heartily.
“Since you told this lie publicly” Sheffield said to Mark, “you need to publicly admit you’re fibbing. Right now.”
Fischer continued to insist– on the witness stand, no less– that my future wife got me a Garo Yepremian photograph as a token of her affection. Insanity! This was more than my poorly-evolved, 8-year old frontal lobe could handle.
“Take your McDonald’s photos and sit down, Mark”, Sheffield said matter-of-factly and then clapped her hands. “OK students, please get out your cursive books, chapter 6!”
And that was that.
With the clap of a bony hand– months of glorious anticipation and hope were left gruesomely mangled under the steamroller of the Fischer BS Express.
Later at recess, all of us made a beeline for the playground and squatted behind the spaceship slide, to discuss this outrage further.
To my utter bewilderment, Mark Fischer mozied over to us and crouched down too, like nothing had happened. He was doubling down and still trying to maintain his innocence. “Guys, I swear my Uncle Mel got those pictures from HER! She thought we liked football!”
I stood up.
“If you don’t shut up, I’m going to kick you”, I said flatly, looking down at his smug puss squatting in the sand.
“I swear to God the pictures came from Jess—”
I hauled off and kicked him in the thigh and like someone popping the lid off a rancid can of surströmming, the foulness exploded onto everyone else. Hands and feet began flying in the sand behind the spaceship slide. There came a torrent of anger, expressed through the most economical means possible: slapping, punching, kicking and hissing. He put his hands up over his head to buffer the slaps from above, as I continued kicking him hard in the ass—as if candy was going to come out. With each punt on the Fischer piñata, he was getting covered with sand too.
He tried to stand up under this volley of primate-like pummeling– presumably to run away– and just as he straightened his legs, I gave him one final, swift shove with the bottom of my sneaker, sending him flying towards the slide, face first. His chin hit the metal slide and his protruding front teeth punctured his bottom lip. It’s a miracle they weren’t knocked clean out of his mouth . He flipped back around silently, his back now resting on the slide, with this surprised, terrified look– sand all over his face. For a moment all of us laughed at his ridiculous, frozen visage. And then blood began splashing from his lip, down his chin and unto his shirt. Even with crimson pouring out of his face, he never made a peep.
Oh shit! I’d killed him! Guilt-ridden and scared to death, I instinctively ran across the playground to go get help, while the others attended to his corpse.
“Mrs. Sheffield! Mark fell on the slide and cut his lip! He’s not moving!” I yelled, about halfway to her. She jumped up and ran in the direction of the chaos. I jogged alongside her and offered my breathless, improvised commentary– “He was fooling around trying to climb up the slide and he probably slipped on the sand!”
“Oh heavens to Betsy!” Sheffield said as she came around the spaceship to find Fischer sitting at the foot of the slide, blood dripping freely. “Let me look at you!” she said, bending down and lifting his chin up for a better view. She raised an eyebrow. “That lip is stoved-up pretty good, isn’t it?” she chuckled, seemingly unconcerned. “Greg and Spencer, help take him to the clinic to get it looked at— hurry!” The two of us gingerly escorted a battered Mark Fischer, through the pine trees to the office clinic.
I wasn’t mad at him anymore. Blood had somehow settled the score. I was relieved that he was alive. As we walked him up the office steps, I leaned in and said quietly, “You fell on the slide and hit your mouth trying to go up the wrong way.”
He looked at me blankly and didn’t acknowledge a word.
Mark came back to class about an hour later, in a brand new, white Pinewood Acres shirt and holding a plastic baggie filled with crushed ice on his enormous lip. None of us had been called down to the office, so he’d kept that swollen piehole of his shut.
Most perplexing of all was that not a single word was said about Uncle Mel or about Jessica Lange, the rest of the week. The feedback loop had been terminated somehow. It was as if we’d sweated it all out through a dark night and the fever had finally broken.
Hope Springs Eternal
The final week of my third grade year ended uneventfully. We were supposed to have a party outside that Friday. All the junk food and treats were laid out on the picnic tables after lunch, for the celebration— huge barrels of Charles’ Chips and trays of cupcakes. I remember someone brought a lot of watermelon too, which had been carefully sliced and displayed on one entire table. I’d never eaten it before, but Spencer promised me it was delicious.
And then, right before it was time to start, one of those crazy South Florida thunderstorm cells descended on Kendall and washed out the whole afternoon. Sheffield ran all the treats inside our little classroom, but the watermelon stayed outside in the downpour. Within the span of five minutes it went from sunny to a blinding typhoon. For the next two hours, we sat inside looking out of Sheffield’s two mini windows and waiting for things to clear.
In a move that would’ve gotten her fired in today’s world, Sheffield announced, “Any boys who want to go out and play in the rain can do so until the dismissal bell.” Maybe she was hoping for a strategic lightening strike on me. Maybe she was convinced baptism with water was a necessary sacrament for smut-obsessed boys like us. Whatever the case, all six of us took up her offer.
We ran and played in the open field, in the midst of a savage thunderstorm, without the slightest fear or care in the world. We got drenched to the bone and smeared the forsaken watermelon all over our faces while the lightning struck alarmingly close to the Pinewood playground. We jumped off the picnic tables and put our heads under the rain gutters, like we were in a shower— yelling like banshees and rolling in the mud. Sheffield watched us from the one of the tiny windows in that square, Dade County cottage and never once came out to stop us. It’s one of the best memories I have— not just from that year— but from my entire six years at that little school.
The dismissal bell finally rang, just as the rain was starting to let up, and I was free from Sheffield. Our year in the Gulag was over. I’d miraculously survived. While waiting for Mom to pick me up at carpool, someone found a tennis racket. I grabbed it and swung my arm windmill-style, as I hit an overdriven power chord thru an imaginary wall of Marshall stacks.
Summer had come to take us into her bosom.
Epilogue
To be totally transparent, the fever wasn’t completely gone.
During the first week of freedom over the summer break, when I should’ve been out having adventures without a care in the world, I caught some phantom symptoms that immobilized me for a few days. Remnants of the old virus were still kicking around.
Sitting up in my tree fort— the Freebisch spot— I remembered one of the Jessica articles that someone had clipped for our Book of Dawn. The interview in that clipping had mentioned she lived in a cabin near Duluth, Minnesota; near her family. I couldn’t let that go. I didn’t have an exact address, but I knew the city. And I knew how to pronounce it because I’d asked Mom. Doo-looth.
In our Book of Dawn meetings that year, we had discussed the power of getting a phone number from the operator, so the seed had been planted. I had tried it out one time at my grandmother’s house and then said to the operator “Shut up, bitch!” and promptly slammed the phone down. Unfortunately for me, on that day, the operator called my grandmother’s phone back to report some punk kid harassing directory assistance. I got busted.
Afraid to call the operator from my house— and leveraging an outrageous degree of chutzpah— I walked over to my neighbor Tommy Murphy’s house and asked to use his phone for “business”. He said, “I guess” and let me in. He was my age, but I wasn’t even really friends with Murphy. His older brother had his own yellow touchstone phone in his bedroom, which was inside the Murphy’s converted two-car garage.
From there I managed to get directory assistance for Duluth and I asked the operator for the phone number of one Jessica Phyllis Lange. The operator asked me “How old are you?” To which I responded casually, and in a slightly deeper voice, “Thirteen.” She said “If you’re thirteen, what year were you born?” I choked and threw out a phony year, which most likely had unwittingly made me almost 27. Math was always my Achilles heel. “You need to ask your Mom before calling directory assistance”, she said bluntly. And then hung up.
I sat there in the Murphy garage, staring at his brother’s yellow phone and trying to figure out my next step. “What are you trying to do?” said Tommy, completely clueless. I didn’t answer him. I got up the nerve and tried again. This time a different operator said to me “M’am, that number is not publicly listed. It’s private.” My heart somersaulted in my rib cage. I had found her! The only thing between me and Jessica was this operator!
I then tried, as smoothly as any 8-year old can, to persuade this dear woman that it was OK to give me the number. “I won’t tell anyone”, I promised, with my hand raised before God. This went on, painfully, for about two minutes— with me me groveling and becoming increasingly beggarly. She eventually hung up on me too.
And with that, the fever finally broke. I was done. And ready to be an 8-year old again.
I never saw Mark Fischer again. He went to Ransom Everglades the following year and just like my instincts told me, our paths would never cross. Our little congregation did mention him back at Pinewood the following year. But we never got into the Jessica stuff or the craziness from that year. Just the chimpanzee riot that we delivered to his doorstep, out by that spaceship slide. The memory of that tribal beat-down was cherished by all.
A few years ago, I found him on social media. We had no mutual friends, but his profile was open. He’s an executive for a luxury, foreign car manufacturer. I won’t mention the name. He is highly successful. Which doesn’t surprise me one bit. In his profile pic he’s posing with his wife and their dog. And by God if he doesn’t still have a fat bottom lip.
[Author’s note: With the exception of my name and Mrs. Sheffield’s, I have slightly altered the names of every character here. To some adults, these kind of childhood disclosures are embarrassing. While that’s obviously not the case with me, I respect their right to not be implicated in this stupidity. I’m also still friends with some of the guys in this story, in one form or another. There is some compression in the narrative and a few of the people and events are composites. Having said that, all of the main plot points actually occurred and remain a part of my glorious memory growing up in Kendall in the 70’s. ]
