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| The 1929 Chevy. |
Prior to leaving his home he had been admonished by his
stepfather to come home directly after the recital. He walked up the street, noting
the moonrise and enjoying the cool night air -- and also being in a slight swivet
over the coming performance. He believed he was no musician, and never would
be. He had agreed to take lessons to satisfy his mother, who was apparently of
the opinion he could be a genius composer like his late father.
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| Where it started. |
As he entered the Stanfield house he glanced at the small audience.
He immediately noticed Bob Bedford. Bob was a neighbor, and his presence at the
recital indicated he was probably up to no good. Bob was never up to any good,
he remembered. He was a prankster. Beside Bedford sat Jeanne Kretsinger, a mutual neighbor
and classmate at Los Gatos High School, and a good friend.
The recital went well, he recalled. No one made a bad error
or stumbled into embarrassment. He believed he himself had done fairly well. He
had learned his piece by ear. On the way out Bedford said they were going to a
place in San Jose for a soda or shake and invited him to go with them. He remembered
getting into the car without thinking about his stepfather’s advice. Reflecting now with the wisdom of age, he
imagined it was exactly what any other 15-year-old would do.
Peggy Stanfield was his companion in the back seat. In San
Jose they had stopped at a drive-in burger stand, and he remembered they also had
ice cream sodas all around. That was all. The trip back to los Gatos was uneventful; just
chatter, he recalled. But when he finally looked at his watch, he really broke into a sweat. He’d been gone a long time. He'd ignored his stepfather. It wouldn’t have been a good
idea to ask Bedford to speed up, either.
Bedford was
driving his father’s '28 or '29 Chevrolet sedan. He drove it when his father, a
marine engineer, was at sea. The next few minutes were a blur until he realized
the car was on the playing field of the high school. He remembered yelling at
Bob asking him what he was doing and the answer was “I’m going to try a skid on
the grass.” He remembered saying to himself Uh-oh as the maneuver failed. Instead
of a skid they were in a roll, and forever in his mind he would remember
watching the grass coming up to him and the car slowly tilting until it was resting
on its top.
In his memory, he could recreate the whole scene: the Chevy
full of kids, the green grass in the bright moonlight, and Peggy screaming and
screaming as the car went over.
Peggy was still screaming at the row of houses that lined
the field as they all crawled out. No one seemed hurt so, just as in the
movies, he slapped Peggy and told her to shut up. She did. He lay on his back
near the still slowly turning right front wheel, collecting his thoughts. He
watched the moon as it periodically
appeared through the hole in the disk wheel that provided access for filling
the inner tube. He later recalled the moon must have been in a perfect alignment with his eyes and the
turning wheel for this to occur.
He recalled the brief, extreme silence and thinking
at the same time about how to get Peggy home and what his stepfather was going to
do. Then he made another mistake. Instead of asking Peggy to call her parents to
take them home, he had decided to call his stepfather. Bad plan.
Later, although he could remember the episode on the playing field in detail, he didn't remember the scene when he arrived home. It was bad enough that his usually kind stepfather didn’t speak to
him for weeks. He endured many, many dinners that ended in the same chilly
silence with which they had begun.
Somehow, though, things eventually got back to normal. His memory fails him now with regard to the whereabouts of Bob Bedford, or how Bedford got his father’s Chevy back on its wheels, or what happened after that. He never spoke to Peggy Stanfield again. Perhaps she was mad at being slapped.
No great loss, he decided … he was busy with Hester de
Lisle.
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