The Boys from Santa Cruz

2

Once I’d decided where I was going, my next problem was figuring out how to get there. After weighing all the options, I decided to take Teddy’s Olds. It seemed like it would be more fun than taking the bus and less risky than hitchhiking with a backpack full of dope. And if I did get pulled over, not having a driver’s license was going to be the least of my problems.

The car was a ’77 Delta 88 with air-conditioning, a tape deck, and a V-8 engine that pressed you back against the bench seat when you floored the accelerator. I had all the weed I could smoke and enough money to buy all the fast food I could eat, so in spite of all the harsh things that had happened to me that day, once I got the hang of driving, I was almost happy.

The closest I came to getting arrested wasn’t while I was driving, it was when I pulled in for gas at an ARCO mini-mart near Davis. By the time I saw the highway patrol car parked outside, I was already committed. I figured driving away without buying anything would have looked even more suspicious, so I pulled up to the pumps, got out of the car, went inside, gave the guy a twenty against a fill-up, went back out to the pump, pushed the button for the 87 octane, lifted the nozzle casually, turned around, and discovered there was no place to put it-the gas tank was not on that side of the car.

I was sure the cop was checking me out. The scorched Mohawk alone would have caught his attention. Not to mention my WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU LOOKING AT? T-shirt. Be cool, I ordered myself. Gas tank must be around the other side. Fortunately, the hose reached. Unfortunately, the tank wasn’t on that side, either. I nearly pissed my pants. Where’s the fucking gas cap? Is the cop getting suspicious? Don’t look at him, don’t look at him. But if he sees I don’t know how to fill up the car, he’s going to think I stole it. To cover myself, I knelt down and pretended to check the right rear tire. Think, dude, think! It’s got to be someplace!

So now I was walking around the stupid car, tugging the hose as far as it would stretch, pretending to check all the tires and the lights and shit. The cop’s eyes were boring holes in me, and I was trying to act casual, but I was sweating bullets and my mind was racing a million miles a second by the time I noticed that the rear license plate was mounted on a spring. Suddenly it all came back to me. In the Olds, the rear license plate flipped down and the gas cap was hidden behind it. I must have seen Teddy do it a dozen times. End of crisis.

The rest of the ride was a piece of cake. It was dark by the time I reached my old hometown of Santa Cruz, where the palm trees meet the pines. I have to admit I got a little lump in my throat when the candy-colored lights of the Boardwalk came into view. We’d had some good times in this town, me and my mom. I used to have a season pass for the rides. Once I rode the Giant Dipper sixty-seven times in a row. I even had a little gang of friends. We were eleven, we had bicycles and boogie boards, and we owned that town from the university heights to the beachfront flats.

Then my mother died and I went to live with my grandparents, Fred and Evelyn Harris. That lasted about six months, until my grandfather slapped me for calling my grandmother a bitch (which I didn’t, I only said she was acting like a bitch, which she was). Anyway, I punched him in his droopy nuts, and they sent me to live with my father.

But now my father was dead, too. I knew that for sure by this time: I’d heard it on the car radio. They said he’d shot himself to avoid being taken into custody, but they never said why he was being taken into custody in the first place.

I didn’t know if Fred and Evelyn had also heard the news. They probably had, I thought, but since they hated my father more than they hated me, I hoped that would work in my favor. If they were willing to let bygones be bygones, I figured, so was I.