Maybe Paradise Wasn't So Much... Part 2

Thursday, September 16, 2004 5:53 AM

One of my favorite memories of Jenny had to do with a game the neighborhood kids played. We lived in a community where the grounds were patrolled every evening by a guard who would drive up and down the streets and carports. Sometimes we would play “ditch the guard”, teasing him by flitting in the space between houses, dancing on the edge of his perception like ghosts as he cruised slowly by. We’d race ahead of him waiting for him to almost pass then make enough noise or movement to pique his interest enough for him to stop and turn on the big Delco searchlight mounted to the side of his car. Once Louie chucked a washer from behind a hedge at the patrol car that spanged off the hood. We must have spent a half hour that night making our way back to our houses, and even then the guard circled the area long afterwards like a tiger with a smarting tail.

In today’s world of Terrorist Alerts and heightened security awareness this kind of game would be considered extremely foolish and possibly even dangerous. A neighbor might come out with a gun, or an overly aggressive guard might persue until he could take a bad day out on his quarry, but that world was slightly less scary that close to home.

One night, five of us were hanging out in the carports, talking endlessly about nothing we would ever remember. The night was warm and the moon was barely visible and no one heard when the security guard's car quietly and unexpectedly rolled into the drive leading to the carports. Without warning the harsh white beam from the searchlight blazed to life and swept the carports a few rows over. Most of us broke for safety, scattering like mice, knowing we had bare seconds to ditch or just give it up and answer banal adult questions. I was already breaking for a route to safety when I heard Jenny let out a strangled little scream behind me. Looking back, I saw her with her arms pulled in close, her hands partly raised as if keeping a ghost at bay. Her eyes were huge and locked on to the swiftly moving light. She had never done this before and didn’t know how to react.

“Jenny, Come ON!” I whispered as loudly and urgently as I could. “Let’s GO!” She turned her head in my direction, but her eyes were wide and wild and she was frozen in place. In what I would consider one of the true highlights of my admittedly young life, I ran the five steps back to her and grabbed ahold of her hand just as the searchlight reached out to her. One quick tug broke the spell and we flew down the hedge-lined walkway between houses, her hand tightly clenching mine.

The car behind us lept forward like a predator, it’s engine loud and throaty and headed our way. The hedgerow was too long and it seemed for a moment as if we were caught, but we slid sideways into a bare spot where it had been partly cut away the week before for workers to get at some piping. Almost before the leaves stopped moving around us, the car pulled up even with the walkway, it's bright eye flooding the path in front of us, so white it bleached the color out of the dark green leaves.

We pushed as deeply into the hedge as possible and I held her tightly to me hoping that we were safe. Much later, my brother would remark at the long scratches on my back made by the branches we’d backed into. He teased me, saying that I should get a girlfriend with shorter fingernails, but at the time I hadn’t noticed. Of course you probably could have openly scourged me at that moment and I wouldn't have felt it, because that’s when I really became aware of Jenny.

In that way that boys have of not paying attention to what’s in front of them, I never really saw Jenny before. She was almost a year-and-a-half younger than I was which, by adult standards, means almost nothing but I was headed into my sophomore year in high school and she was still in Jr. High making the gulf huge and distinct like the opposite shores of a wide river. She was pretty enough, but I was already looking forwards to seeing a couple of other girls from my class that fall. Yet, there we were, our hearts b

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